


Daylight

by Flowerflamestars



Series: Daylight AU [1]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Healing and Belonging in a place all your own, Helion is A Good Dude, Identity Porn, M/M, Nesta in the steppes is shockingly BAD, The Nesta and Helion Brotp we all deserve, The ten thousand libraries, a ride or die nerd, without having to spend all your time with your baby sisters friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:15:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 90,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23759698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerflamestars/pseuds/Flowerflamestars
Summary: Nesta Archeron, banished and betrayed, ran from cold and hatred straight into the light of Day and found a place where she could belong.
Relationships: Azriel/Lucien Vanserra, Elain Archeron & Azriel, Elain Archeron & Lucien Vanserra, Elain Archeron & Nesta Archeron, Feyre Archeron/Rhysand, Helion & Nesta Archeron, Helion/The Lady of the Autumn Court (ACoTaR), Nesta Archeron/Cassian, Nesta Archeron/Freedom
Series: Daylight AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835599
Comments: 75
Kudos: 300





	1. Banished

It took Nesta a full month to learn to winnow.  
  
Four frozen weeks trapped by blizzard winds that clanged through her skull, cabin as much a cage as her body shaking through withdrawal.  
  
It would have taken half that time is she’d been left alone- banished, betrayed, Nesta wasn’t about to lower herself further to sweating and swearing and struggling in front of the unwilling other inhabitant of the house.  
  
The General of the Night Court had done his job well.  
  
He’d promised Feyre that she’d be _safe.  
  
So safe Nesta was- _entombed in cold and hatred, walled in with nothing but her thoughts and books he’d chosen to tempt her. There was no talking to the Ilyrians who surrounded her- _they’d called her a witch and then a hero and then his, nothing was true, all of it was true. They hated women, they loved strength. Nesta Archeron, the woman who’d asked for none of this and cut the head from a king: an Illyrian treasure, a walking contradictory abomination-_ nor was there any escape.  
  
Brutal aching cold that leaked through the walls to her too thin skin.  
  
The sounds of fighting- _training,_ she told her gritting teeth, her whole tense body that kept expected to be covered in blood once more- the scent of fires, the endless keening winter wind.  
  
Punishment.  
  
She was a _problem_ to her darling sister- so she’d been banished. Handed off to a the General like a pet- it didn’t matter what she’d once dreamt; if he’d never dropped her hand, if Morrigan didn’t exist, would anything actually be different?

It had been more than a year since she stood on a battlefield.  
  
Nesta Archeron had been promised time and life in escaping certain death, received instead a silence that bit deeper than any wound war could have bestowed.  
  
How many times had he tried now that his bastard lord made Nesta his problem? _You need to eat. Are you cold? Are you sleeping? Nesta? Nesta, please._  
  
She could no more escape his voice than the hellish looming mountains themselves.  
  
The wretched strength of her body seemed so focused on listening: the boom of his heart like thunder, the telling breath that stopped in his lungs when he looked at her in firelight, the sigh when she walked away every damned time.  
  
But so too, did she hear other things. The prayers, the whispers of torment. A people who valued and loved their free falling freedom, reduced to the ruins of an army.  
  
Where were their cities of old? Their language? Their sons sent in good faith to defend their High Lord and obliterated to such an extent no bodies could be laid to rest?  
  
For a male who toted his Illyrian blood so greatly, Rhysand had left an entire people to rot.  
  
So Nesta had simply waited it out. Practiced instead of sleeping- what the hell did she have to sleep for? Exhaustion was at least a feeling, now that every drop of distraction had been sweated of by her relentless immortal body. In temperance, she could be angry- with her anger, she could find _magic._  
  
Four weeks, and she could winnow.  
  
Four weeks and two days, the eastern clans of the Illyrian mountains rose in rebellion in name of their beloved dead, and the General of the Night Court left her alone to go put them down.  
  
Nesta shed the clothes she’d been given.  
  
Furs and soft leather; the stink of the animals they’d once been strong enough to her inhuman senses that she’d vomited the first time she’d dressed in them.  
  
They’d thought she was still drunk.  
  
In the hour she’d been given between being _collected_ from her apartment and banishment- _Nesta, I’ll take care of your apartment. It’ll be better away, I can’t watch anymore, you don’t need your things, everything will be provided-_ she’d stolen a single forgotten dress from the room she’d once stayed in at her sister’s home.  
  
Purple, not all the damned red people had handed off to her. Soft. Not sheer Night Court silk or gilded finery- weighted, dark as the last punch of twilight, cut like a mortals gown.  
  
She threw the fur that reeked of fear and pale mountain foxes into the fire with a prayer for their souls- Nesta had heard the Illyrians sing to their dead, glory and love, to fly and run free among the stars- and laced the now oversized dress tight as it would go.  
  
No one had taught her winnowing was dangerous.  
  
No one had told her that the more powerful you are, the more careful you need to be.  
  
Nesta Archeron closed her eyes, and thought with all that was left of her heart in the gaping black beneath her ribs, that she wanted to feel the sunlight again.  
  
The Crones face in the living world, heir of the Cauldron- nothing stood in her way.

***

  
It shouldn’t have been a surprise to see Azriel.  
  
It wouldn’t have been to anyone else- Azriel was dutiful above all else, he still _spoke_ to Cassian, the right and left hands of a military body that sprawled into chaos far beyond them. Even if he’d made it clear he wasn’t happy to fill the role.  
  
In the middle of a rebellion, at a knives edge standstill between two forces that didn’t want to hurt each other, Azriel would be an incredible asset.  
  
The co-commander, the friend who’d knock into his wings and tell him where to aim wasn’t standing in front of Cassian.  
  
Ice cold, black northern Illyrian eyes stared him down with a weariness Cassian hadn’t seen in a long time.  
  
He knew better than to step too close into the shadows around him.  
  
Unbuckling the swords from his back, Cassian eyed Azriel from under the fall of his hair and tried not to sigh. He didn’t _want_ the newest bad news. “The wind clans want restitution, permission to build beyond the camps.”  
  
Azriel didn’t blink. “They should have it.”  
  
“It would be a seat of power in a decade,” Cassian said lowly, for all that he agreed with Azriel, he had to say it. “A stronghold.”  
  
Azriel didn’t move or bother to reply until Cassian was done, a neat pile of blades and armor on the table between them. In the firelight, it was impossible to hide the roiling motion of shadow, a teaming sea of dark that said everything his impassive, dangerous face didn’t.  
  
Cassian was so damned tired.  
  
“If Rhys wants us to attack, we will at dawn, but I think only the leaders”-  
  
“I didn’t come from Rhys.”  
_  
That_ made Cassian cease going through the motions that this might be anything near a normal evening- Azriel hadn’t willingly been in his company in more than a month. The question in his mouth didn’t even need to spoken with this much darkness gathered in the room- with a sigh, some of the sheer menace faded from Azriel’s own tired expression.  
  
“You should sit down, Cas.”  
  
Cassian listened, if only because he couldn’t _imagine why he needed to._ They were Illyrians- Cassian would no more tell Azriel to sit down to hear bad news than he would try to tell him how to hold Truthteller.  
  
That Az stalked forward and blocked the door his seat before the fire faced raised a sick lurch of dread to fill his chest. “Is Mor okay? Did something happen to Feyre? Or Rhys”  
  
Arms crossed, Azriel huffed, the noise so far from what everything in this room spoke of that Cassian could only blink in response. “Feyre is _perfectly_ fine. Morrigan is still holed up in the country, unchanged.”  
  
“She’ll be”-  
_  
“Cassian.”  
_  
The tempo of his heart spilling fear picked up to a fever pitch.  
  
Maybe he knew it before Az said it. Maybe some part of him had known the second he left her alone- the words seemed forgone, haze shimmering over his vision as Azriel spoke.  
  
“Nesta’s gone.”  
  
The blocked door became a painfully obvious necessity as Cassian shot to his feet, wings sending the chair to ground. Gone. _Gone, gone, gone_ \- she was skin and bones, silence and shaking fearful rage- _she wasn’t safe. “_ Gone _where?_ ”  
  
Azriel just looked at him, dark eyes as unforgiving as the night sky.  
  
“ _Azriel,_ what happened?” He’d begun pressing against his own chest without realizing it, that space between ribs and heart that had once thrummed constantly: a second heart-beat, a white hot thread he could have followed through any storm. Cassian would’ve torn into his own chest to have that bleeding, guiding tether now.  
  
Where was Nesta?  
  
He’d thought she was _safe._ Not happy- but at least no longer so numb to herself she was actively seeking harm. Breathing brutal absolute rage in what seemed like ever conscious breath, but it had been a _feeling, he’d thought-_ he’d thought she’d surface. Heal. _Something._  
  
His closest chosen brothers face said _something_ was very different from whatever mad, broken hope Cassian had been harboring.  
  
“You won’t tell me where she is.”  
  
The resignation brought Azriel closer, like he could see the veritable pit that Cassian felt had opened beneath him. “She left of her own free will, Cas.”  
  
Hands in fists before he could blink, heat alchemized from the fear into something worse, Cassian’s voice was a horror to his own ears. “You _know_ she isn’t okay. You haven’t see her Az- a deep breath might break ribs at the rate she’s going, someone, anyone might”-  
  
With infinite tried patience Azriel murmured back. “She could be actively bleeding out and no one could hurt her. Amren confirmed it, Morrigan- Nesta Archeron is only High Fae on the outside, and you know it. Nothing can touch her.”  
  
Cassian was shaking hard enough his wings made noise, rustling against each other.  
  
Azriel sighed.  
  
“ _Cassian_ ,” He said again, carefully. “She’s unharmed, and she left of her own power. You need to let her go.”  
  
Over the roaring fire and Cassian’s rattling bones, a metallic crack echoed through the room. It took him a second to realize- staring at Azriel’s face as it lost composure, tired and pained and furious in a way that both included and blamed Cassian, as Cassian so soundly deserved and damn well knew it- that he’d dug hard enough into the leather buckled across his chest that metal had snapped in his hand.  
_  
“Why?”  
_  
Every shadow in the room flickered before dissipating at once. 

“Why?” Azriel repeated, ice that had been in his gaze the whole time slipping loose. “Because she was in a cage. Because you know gods damn well you should have said _no_.”  
  
Cassian made a hollow facsimile of a laugh, the exact wrong response. Some part of him was pounding adrenaline, shouting with fear- Cassian wanted it to hurt. “To a direct order?”  
  
It had been a favor, and they both knew it. A plan that Feyre and Rhys hadn’t told Morrigan or Amren, Elain or Lucien- and it hadn’t been coincidence. He’d known it was wrong- how could it be _anything_ but wrong?  
  
But then he’d seen Nesta, more starved wraith than woman, empty eyed in intoxication, and panicked.  
  
There was reason why, those now long years ago, that Rhysand hadn’t told Azriel the exact details of Feyre’s stay in Spring.  
  
Loyal to his Court to the death- but Azriel was too long old in his power to tolerate anyone at all being put through the kind of suffering he himself knew intimately, without trying to stop it.  
  
Darkly, sometimes Cassian thought it was that anger and drive that had kept Azriel alive, even now.  
  
Worse than simple rage, Azriel shook his head. Disappointed. “An order? I told you, I told Rhys _, if you trapped her, if you took one more thing away from her”-_  
  
“I didn’t”-  
  
It was impossible to win a fight, Cassian knew, when you didn’t mean it. Your body had to follow your arm. If you couldn’t carry the motion and back it up, it was only yourself you were going to hurt.  
  
“The second Feyre banished her and you didn’t help her, there were only two options. Cassian, Nesta was either going to die in these mountains or run. We’re lucky she didn’t blast her way out.”  
  
How many times had he seen it in his dreams?  
  
A cold mountain grave. Wildflowers in place of a woman who’d once burned with enough vitality to fuel the sun itself. He was angry now, empty now- but the dreams always gave him this: _rage._

It tasted so much like flames as to be a piece of Nesta that he’d managed to borrow for himself. Rage at broken promises. At Feyre’s tears. At his past and future self, _alone_.  
  
It was a future Cassian, awake and breathing, had built.

There wasn’t any fire left.  
  


***

Nesta, despite the assumptions of her sisters, was not so detached from her physical form as to seek out injury.  
  
Sure, she’d tried a vivid and blinding range of magical intoxicants that could only have been made by rich, spoiled immortals. She’d drunk herself sick and beyond. Fucked and fought and learned every vaguest limitation of her alien body.  
  
Nesta had sought feeling- with a reckless, dangerous abandon.  
  
But she’d hadn’t looked for new pain and didn’t like it particularly.  
  
So the skin flaying feeling she’d learn was her was power smashing through wards- her body traveling through nothingness with the speed and destructive force of a falling star- wasn’t a triumph.  
  
Nor was the slam that stopped her motion, Nesta’s body crashing hard enough to knock the air from her lungs and break bone, had she still been a human.  
  
But the stone floor beneath her was _warm_. The insane fervor of her senses told her there was paper and ink everywhere, book binders glue, paper old and new. Blooming fruit trees and green, green, _green_.  
  
Nesta Archeron rolled over, and laughed.  
  
The sound hurt coming out, ill with disuse. She didn’t have a damned idea where she was, but it wasn’t the cursed Night Court. There was no corner of the territory her sister commanded that didn’t reek of sea air and jasmine, where mountain wind wasn’t right on the edge of awareness.  
  
Sunlight streamed down on her from a domed ceiling, every color of the rainbow represented in stained glass.  
  
A hand adorned in a full set of glittering emerald and topaz rings, one on each finger and two on the thumb, intruded into her dazzled view, ink a barely visible stain on loam dark skin.

“ _How,_ ” A silken, shockingly pleased voice followed, “ _the hell_ did you do that?”  
  
Nesta rose unsteadily to her feet, the world tipping around her unpleasantly, to find herself face to face with a High Lord of Prythian.  
  
Golden eyes. A kind, if ravenous mouth. Beauty the likes of which was said to have driven mortals mad, no trace or even echo of humanity in the perfection.  
  
Helion Spellcleaver, the Lord of Day.  
  
It was not the beauty that made Nesta physically wobble, light trails trying to start at the edges of her vision.  
  
The hand that had presumably, she realized too late, been extend to help her upright reached again. Helion didn’t touch her, but hovered a few inches away, as though to catch Nesta if her staggering became something more substantial.  
  
With the iron control that kept death locked up inside her, Nesta managed to straighten, squaring her shoulders. “I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
Helion tilted his head.  
  
Didn’t step closer, didn’t stare, displayed none of the dominance or fascination that Nesta had encountered and hated from others of his ilk. _Power calls to power_ , Morrigan had told her, like a warning, before telling her stay away from Cassian all over again. _You are a queen_ , the Bonecarver had said, monstrous and achingly familiar, _like my sister was_.  
  
High fae males had about as many issues with Nesta as she with them, she’d learned.  
  
Less silk and more obvious care, Helion said, “How about I tell you where you landed, and you could perhaps, in exchange, tell me what you were trying to do.”  
  
Horrified at the burn in her eyes at being spoken to like a logical, cognizant being, Nesta nodded, swallowing the flare like rage.  
  
Assured, he took another step back until he was at such a respectful distance as a human might be in courting. Gemstones threw light as he pointed, and Nesta allowed herself to follow.  
  
“This,” Helion gestured, encompassing glass overhead and another story bellow, more books and lights and more ambient free floating magic than she’d ever seen, “Is my personal collection. The one library that survived completely unscathed through the war- a ten thousand year stronghold.”  
  
On another man, another faerie, Nesta would have been waiting for this to turn on her. Instead, Helion sounded…as though he were trying not to laugh?  
  
Indeed, warmth seeped audibly into his tone. “I wonder, did you feel the wards? Do they even exist to you?”  
  
Unintentionally, Nesta rubbed at her aching sternum before she could stop herself. “I felt them.”  
  
The strolling spin that had been guiding her to look- look at the marvel, what she would give for _an hour_ to read the words on those ancient pages- stopped abruptly. Quick bright eyes snagged on her before flicking away, blinking.  
  
Careful, _serious,_ his whole demeanor shifted. “The building is telling me you came from…the Illyrian mountains? Is that correct?”  
  
Nesta swallowed and raised her chin. “Yes.”  
  
Helion stopped moving at all. “You are Nesta Archeron, sister of the High Lady and Emissary of the Night Court.”  
  
“We’ve met,” Nesta snapped, before she could help herself. Forcefully, she breathed out her nose, evened her tone. “And I am not the Emissary, or anything else.”  
  
Helion blinked.  
  
“Are there…shortages, in the North? Trade has been substantial, and the harvests have been on time, on our end of things. If Rhysand”-  
  
This time when Nesta spoke, there was bile on her tongue. “There are no shortages. To my knowledge, food from your farms is widely distributed throughout the territory.”  
  
Nesta knew what she had to do next, what she had to say. Unlike Feyres brief time as emissary wherein, as far as Nesta could tell, she’d used the office as an excuse to do whatever damned thing she wanted- including destroy the mortal life her sisters had been trying to build- Nesta had bothered to learn what was expected of her. How the Courts worked- pledges and treaties, courtesies and loyalties.  
  
Asylum.  
_  
It is not Rhysand_ , she told herself, hate and fear rising to choke her as Nesta sank neatly as she could to her weak knees before the High Lord.  
  
Her pride it turned out, was just alive enough that she could hardly meet his gaze to say the words. “I come as a supplicant. I come without Court or bloodline, mate or corporal bond, to ask mercy and pledge, to you, Helion Spellcleaver, Lord of Day. May the sun rise over you evermore. A small bondswoman of no status, I pledge myself in debt”-

Nesta stopped speaking, because Helion had crashed down beside her, bumping into a reading table as he did so.  
  
“Stop.“  
  
Nesta just looked at him, aware all at once that her breathing was starting to come in gasps.  
  
If she couldn’t pledge- if she couldn’t seek asylum- he’d send her _back._  
  
“A bondswoman? Nesta Archeron,” Helion was shaking his head, “You’re not my subject. Or a child, or a religious penitent. You don’t owe me or anyone else so much as a lowered head. Ever.”  
  
“That is not,” Nesta gasped, the panic pounding through her freeing any careful words from her tongue. “What other High Lords would say.”  
  
Carefully not touching her, leaning so as that his enormous size didn’t dwarf her, Helion frowned. “Why the hell were you with _Illyrians_?”  
  
Her chest was rising and falling fast enough she couldn’t hide it. “Sent,” she gasped, “Banished.”  
  
Brighter than the rings in sunlight, Helion’s eyes gleamed inhuman and troubled. “I can help you breathe,” he said, with a tension she couldn’t grasp at. “Take off the edges.”  
  
She stared at him and said nothing, _fear, fear, fear,_ in every rattled inhale.  
  
Waiting for the intrusion of magic.  
  
Waiting, she eventually realized, just as he was, for permission. Watching her with widening eyes, but Helion hadn’t acted.  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” Nesta heaved. _“_ Do it. _”_  
  
Still, she couldn’t fully control or stop as she automatically shied away from his huge, broad shouldered body scooting closer.  
  
With unbearable gentleness, Helion quietly spoke. “I won’t touch you.”  
  
Power, when it came, was soft. Like stepping into a warm bath, like late spring sun gathered on bare skin- warmth slowly seeped past and overwhelmed panicked pain, air like green shoots of grass burst fresh from her lungs.  
  
It was several moments before either spoke.  
  
Nesta was distantly aware she should thank him. She wanted to, but in the sheer _smallness_ she felt, the words wouldn’t come. Shame gathered, hot in the pit of her stomach.  
  
To her resounding relief, Helion didn’t mention what had just happened.  
  
Instead, with the practiced insouciance that was much more on par with the first time she’d seen him, Helion sprawled back on the floor, bright silk cushions appearing underneath him in recline.  
  
It was a ridiculous sight- _decadent_ \- but she didn’t fail to notice that she was also quite suddenly supported and surrounded by softness.  
  
A part of Nesta wanted to sink into the pillows and disappear, but her spine was all she had left.  
  
“The library,” Helion began eventually, rings tapping together as he rapped what might have actually been nervous knuckles on the floor, “Is sentient. Older than most of the Courts of this continent. It lets in who it chooses, and no one else. Once, it supported hundreds of librarians in it’s depths. You could live here, be one of it’s guardians, if you wish.”  
  
“It is,” Nesta didn’t want to ask, wanted to say yes- _yes I will live in this palace of books, I will never leave again, I will breath in a thousand words until I belong in a story again_ \- but it wasn’t that simple. “It is, a job?”  
  
Helion’s restless fingers clenched into a fist. And then relaxed, smoothing over pale marble and leaving a tea tray in their wake.  
  
“In a way,” He poured two cups, but didn’t comment or try to hand her the second, leaving it in easy reach. “You have no need to worry about money, if that’s what you mean. If you keep the library, the library will keep you- it’s a self-contained ecosystem.”  
  
The quiet spooled out between them again as Nesta picked up the cup. No handles, gold on blue, the porcelain fine as paper. She stared at the steam rising toward her face and tried to say _anything._  
  
Beholden to a library was very different than beholden to man only bound to her by magic. Helion would not take her pledge- the entire action had made him uncomfortable, if she had to guess- she wouldn’t be his subject.  
  
Just a powerful, dangerous, broken faery living in his lands.  
  
“If I _belong_ to the library,” Nesta said with careful evenness, “Are there duties in your Court I must also preform?”  
  
“Unless the library itself is under attack, no.” The gentle tone was back, horrifically. “It needs magic and life within its walls. You have a completely singular power, I personally wouldn’t mind your help with my research if you wish it.”  
  
The warmth of the cup was nearly uncomfortable between her palms, but Nesta couldn’t let it go. “If I wish it?”  
  
As though hearing her forgone agreement, Helion smiled blindingly. “Only then.”  
  
Nesta inclined her head, and sipped the tea.  
  


***

Sentience in a building, like so many things about life above the Wall, defied Nesta’s expectations.  
  
One of the best highs she’d ever tried had side effects- none so horrible or interesting as the stimulant made by Sangravah priestesses that had made her eyes bleed- but exhaustion that lasted weeks. A fever that alchemized with something in her immortal body until her sweat appeared peppered with glitter.  
  
She’d gleamed like the moon and slept for ten days, but no matter how tired she was, the euphoria had continued at a low tidal ebb.  
  
Following Helion through the library, his voice that of an eager scholar who’d finally, _finally_ found a colleague, was something like that. So weary as to be numb- so ecstatic that it shook through her limbs, a low tremor of excitement that couldn’t be shut down.  
  
Not _a_ library- ten thousand libraries that made up the Library.  
  
Doors like portals between them: if the Library let her through one, she could go through them all. To Archives and Helion admitted, voice wry, tombs of ancient monarchs. Public spaces and abandoned labs, more than a millennia of learning bound together in protection.  
  
But first, this:  
  
Helion rubbed delighted hands together, ink stain spreading from palm to palm that he didn’t seem to notice. Nesta trying not to sigh, focusing on an empty stone wall.  
  
“Do I touch it?”  
  
Helion shrugged, cat-like. Sheer elegance made even that motion beyond faery-graceful, a magnetically appealing ripple of muscle and supple skin.  
  
Easy- entirely because he hadn’t said _what’s wrong with you, why did you run, why are you skin and bones and power, you’re shaking, eat, drink, do you need a healer?-_ Nesta found herself drawling in a voice she hardly recognized as her own anymore. “You’ve never seen this done before, have you?”  
  
White teeth flashing blinding in late afternoon golden light. “Never.”  
  
Nesta rolled her eyes, safely face to face with the wall, and pressed both palms to the stone.  
  
She was about to ask Helion something else- _am I supposed to visualize? Is there a ritual?-_ when a pulse rebounded beneath her skin. Her senses filled with steady warmth, gold beneath eyelids she hadn’t realized had fallen shut.  
  
Worldless, the Library cracked open at the long-buried heart of Nesta a feeling that said _belonging_.  
_  
Sanctuary. Home. Green grass- hot coffee- dewy mornings- infinite pages- pale silk- ink-smeared- pink sunrises- home._

 _Daughter, find what you seek.  
_  
When Nesta opened her eyes, sunlight dazzled around them. It took a second to sink in that they were _outside,_ presumably on the other side of the wall they’d stood before, at the libraries exterior.  
  
Nesta rocked back on her heels, numbly aware of Helion falling in carefully distant step beside her, and looked up.  
  
The Library had build her a tower. Green copper roof, ruddy natural dark stone a league from any memory of Night Court moonstone. A door comically small for a High Fae home- but just the height for Nesta, whose stature had remained delicate by even human judgement.  
  
As she watched, vines burst from the ground to climb the stone: pale roses and trailing ivy, tangling with bright, poisonous flora she’d only seen in books.  
  
At her raised brow, Helion boomed a laugh, the sound bell-like warmth made manifest. “You are the Library and the Library is you- plants are my signature welcome gift.”  
  
She was so tired, but so, so much happier than she could remember feeling.  
  
“The yellow,” She said, tilted back her head to see all the way to the curving, pointed roof, “Deadly poisonous to many flying fae species?”  
  
Helion’s smile grew just a little sharper. “A very common bloom. See,” He pointed in the direction of the orchards she kept smelling, glass and greenery gleaming beyond it, “They’re very popular in palace architecture as well.”  
  
His palace. Because he was a six hundred year old High Fae Lord.  
  
As though he could sense the tide of her exhaustion rising, Helion pressed one huge hand to his heart and bowed his head. “I will leave you to it, Nesta Archeron of the Thousand Libraries.”  
  
Unable to find a single word for what she was feeling, Nesta nodded warily back and waited for him to winnow away before walking to the door.  
_  
Her door._  
  
Brass handle sunwarm and the scent of cedar thick from threshold, Nesta stepped inside and tried to breathe.  
  
The bottom floor a small, immaculate kitchen- driftwood table and pale stone floor, green cabinets and marbled counters that gleamed almost as bright as the copper kettle that sat in readiness on the stove.  
  
A single staircase wound up- wide enough, she distantly clocked, for a human, not a faery. The second floor was plush with chairs and candles, books lining the wall.  
  
The top of her tower- a bedroom. More books. Everything soft and pale and serene. A skylight that seemed barely sound, golden glass over where she’d lay her head.  
  
Perfect. Impossible. She wanted to _break_ things- _she wanted to never leave_ -she wanted and wanted, the empty hole in the middle of her chest both aching and filling in around the edges.  
  
She’d made if from Day to Night.  
  
Nesta Archeron curled up on a bed that was precisely big enough for her own body and no one else, and wept.


	2. Betrayed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is left behind, and cannot be forgotten. Fractures run deep in the Night Court, old wounds reopened in a world after the war.

Glowing gold through the midnight hour, the High Lord ofDay lay with his back in the dirt, sunflowers swaying over his head.

From hundreds of miles away a soft smoky voice whispered _sleep, dream,_ to his unsettled soul. Alone and awake, love escaped to reverberate between Helion and the plants around him, slumbered blooms seething to life.

He might have sought comfort once. He might still; Day was the land that followed the wheel, no natural pleasure denied.   
  
Helion had been lord for long enough to understand the libraries that lay beyond these fields. Held them in fascination since childhood- every question answered, every story told- long ago taught by his grandmother his place beside them: to safeguard, not rule over.  
  
He’d had to understand them these last years, half living in their collections, trying to heal the wound left by the slaughter Amarantha had made of the librarians it had loved. The soul of the place chose it’s caretakers, treasured them.  
  
But without them? It unwound.   
  
Monolithically ancient, the Library existed to help the living. It never ceased that calling, but it did sometimes need reminding _how._ Beings to live inside it’s walls and help it remember how flesh and blood creatures behaved, what they might need.  
  
The Library needed magic. But what left Helion wide awake was a different question: what could make a faery powerful as Nesta Archeron need the Library?  
  
Seeing the formidable tower it gave her was a shock- he could only imagine from the layout that there was no entry point she wouldn’t be aware of, even from where she slept. No space wide enough for multiple fae, or single male of their species, to enter.  
  
Safety in physical form, walls high enough to touch the sky.  
  
He contemplated, by the midnight hour, laying in a field of sunflowers that bloomed through the night in an attempt to hearten him, cutting off the North. Earth under his head sang _power_ , plants around him _growth, love, birth._ Helion was absolutely capable of it- the land here would always listen. The entire Night Court relied on Day for trade, for food.   
  
What the hell was Rhysand playing at?  
  
Helion didn’t need exactitudes to draw the lines. Nesta had crashed through his wards like a comet- power and force, but on the edge of burnout. Emaciated. Terrified. Filled with a panic he could taste when she’d assumed his rejection of her bizarre and horrifying subservience meant she’d be _returned._  
  
In the middle of the war, freshly reborn, she’d burned like a beacon. The kind of High Fae Amarantha had all but stamped out of existence among their bloodlines: female challengers who could rip apart the world.   
  
Nesta Archeron had cut the head off the _King of Hybern.  
_  
Saved countless lives _,_ helped end a war that was likely to ruin them all.   
  
He’d met Illyrians, even respected a few. But who the hell had thought that a young woman who’d just fought to save the world _, fresh from those wounds,_ belonged in the most viciously misogynistic corner of their land?  
 _  
Banished_ , she’d gasped.   
  
Who could possibly be stupid enough to banish Nesta Archeron?  
  
What Helion remembered from that first meeting of her was mostly this: singular beauty, shaking bravery, a brash absolution that rendered her immune to both charm and falsehood.

She’d _dismissed_ him- he’d been delighted.   
  
Fifty years alone and plenty before that, Nesta Archeron was never going to look at him with a shred of intention and it made Helion desperate for her acquaintance. 

To be High Lord was to be separate- to know Nesta Archeron, he imagined, was to never have a single harsh truth overlooked.   
  
He’d meant what he offered her in honesty. Not a subject, not beholden to him or even to the Library itself so tightly she couldn’t leave. It might not have belonged to him, but the Library belonged to Day: lush season and fair harvest, pleasure and the joy of life sought in whatever form his people chose.  
  
The woman who’d be the Cauldron- made afraid and ashamed and to think she was debt to be taken on. A war hero. One librarian where once had stood five hundred.   
  
Helion was reasonably certain the Library would rip apart Prythian to keep her safe.  
  
He imagined, an easy truth to accept, that he might go to similar lengths.

***

It took six months for Rhysand and Feyre to realize Nesta had gone.  
  
Of course, it happened the very night Cassian has taken to drink himself numb, his first chance at rest in months.   
  
Six months, a starving winter, and three more Illyrian encampments risen in revolt, two separate Lords slaughtered at the hands of lowborn troops. Every shed drop of Illyrian blood made Cassian sick. Every night that he couldn’t sleep spent wondering- did she smile, wherever she had gone?   
  
Was Nesta safe? Had she learned to sleep again, while he laid awake? Found faery food that she could tolerate?  
  
He was ground to pulp- exhausted and bruised on the inside and out.  
  
The very wind seemed stilled, tension that would soon tip into bloodshed Cassian wouldn’t be able to contain.  
  
Azriel found him face down in the bed that had formerly been Nesta’s in his mountain cabin, a half empty bottle of whiskey tucked in beside him. At the undeniable familiar scent- cinnamon, frost, sharp clarity that was Azriel- Cassian pulled a pillow over his head.  
  
“You don’t have to tell me I fucked up again,” Cassian muttered into the fabric, knowing shadows would translate as they shimmered around the room with rage.  
  
Instead, a cold hand intruded, ripping away the pillow. Black furious eyes, but Azriel sighed.  
  
“You look like shit.” No heat, nor frozen intensity.  
  
Cassian squinted, the late hour making it hard to track how many shadows in the room were natural. “I thought you were angry with me.”  
  
Azriel stole the bottle, tipped back his head and _drank_. When he eventually came up for air, his eyes lingered on the blankets; white fox fur, red silks. Luxurious warmth. Clearly, undeniably, Nesta’s. “You should have never done it, but it’s done. You’re angry enough for both of us.”  
  
Of course Azriel knew- not just from spies who doubtless reported the reckless, stupid injuries that littered Cassian’s body in a facsimile of comfort- but the shadows themselves whispered truth: Cassian wanted the pain. It was only fair, it was the only _distraction_.  
  
Sitting up unsteadily, Cassian was drunk enough that the hair tie Azriel flicked at him bounced off his cheek. “Feyre and Rhys will be here in an hour.”  
  
He wanted to close his eyes and disappear. Instead, Cassian twisted back his hair and listened.  
  
“They know,” Azriel gave the words weight, and there it was, the anger that was colder than the half-frozen ground outside. “Feyre wants to search the cabin, she thinks Nesta might have left her a note.”  
  
Azriel looked as tired at the prospect as Cassian felt.  
  
“Do they think I didn’t look? _She burned her clothes._ Left behind a bed she hadn’t slept in and everything Feyre gave her.”  
  
One raised black brow told him exactly how that sounded. “Did anything here actually belong to her?”  
  
Cassian rubbed his palms over his aching eyes. One hour to get his shit together for the dressing down of the millennia for losing track of his High Lady’s sister.  
  
“Does Elain know? Is she okay?”  
  
Azriel scowled. “Feyre didn’t tell her. Said she was too _fragile_.”   
  
Elain was a thousand leagues deep in a sea of time, comprehensible only to Azriel’s shadows or Lucien’s mind half the time. Not broken or delicate; temporarily unmoored, still powerful in a way other fae could only dream of.   
  
Cassian couldn’t imagine what he’d do to be able to see the future.  
  
What he’d come to understand from the mix of Azriel’s caution and Lucien’s vicious snark, was that it was _possibilities_ that were the problem- in chasing a single answer, she’d gone so far forward that everything was muddled, choices and separate potential paths a constant, shifting tide.  
  
He wondered what steps would lead him to even the idea of a world without Illyrian blood on his hands.  
  
A world where Cassian could look Nesta in the eye again.  
  
Rage like a flood surprised him, sweeping in through the numb, shuttered corners of his mind. “Why the hell would Nesta leave a note for _Feyre?_ Of anyone."  
  
Cassian had always had it- his people sang songs about it in secret, the last of three prayers they’d kept under High Fae oppression: for death, for thunder, for _battle rage_. He couldn’t say it in the original words, shape the syllables of a language nearly lost with his dry mouth, but Cassian _was_ it.   
  
Built for war, built for love- his heart had always been an absolute.   
  
Meeting Nesta had transmuted him, like Dawn Court Alchemy, blood to gold. Feeling wasn’t- _wasn’t just_ \- siphon song that could blast apart mountains, killing power contained and precise as a lightening strike.   
  
It was an _ocean._ Too deep and wide to see the shore; maybe by some gossamer strand, maybe some thread remained of the bond he’d blocked like a worthless coward, _maybe_ \- maybe Nesta was somewhere in those depths of fire.   
  
“Feyre used her sisters and the consequence was them losing everything. We dragged them into war. Took away their lives and their home and their futures- and they still walked on a battlefield for her. _Why the hell_ would Nesta want to say anything to her? Feyre didn’t want a goddamn thing to do with her once it was over.”  
  
Azriel had sat down to take in the rant, one eyebrow arced. He handed the bottle of whiskey back over to Cassian, stopper discarded. “It is about as likely as Nesta leaving a message for Morrigan.”  
  
Dry, _wry,_ like Az had been waiting this whole damn time for Cassian to get mad.   
  
Cassian groaned. “Isn’t Mor still holed up in that country manor we’re not supposed to know about?”  
  
“Lucien saw her in Winter last week, but she’s already retreated.”  
  
Cassian took a long swig himself, rather than face the automatic softening of Azriel’s mouth. Not because he’d ever resent or deny him that- but because the comparison burned.   
  
Cassian could barely say Nesta’s name at all, much less without feeling like dying.   
  
“They’re going to ask you to bring her back,” He hedged. No one in the world could hide from a shadowsinger, even if they walled themselves in from physical retrieval. As he was sure Nesta had.   
  
Az had known where she was the entire time.   
  
With a certainly borrowed, fox-like shrug, Azriel’s eyes returned to ice. “There’s no grounds.”  
  
Cassian was saved from gaping and choking out the word, _legally?_ by the exacting tap against his mind that drew attention like a called name.  
  
The High Lord and High Lady had arrived.  
  
A sick lurch of guilt rose in Cassian’s gut. But outside was this: Feyre, rumpled and flushed, tapping on flat leather boot with impatience. Rhysand, arm tucked around her, nose in her hair.  
  
Rhys, who looked up, and smiled. 

*** 

After the dressing down that didn’t happen- Rhysand’s swift changing, well-schooled expression that didn’t fool Cassian for a single, damned second, he went to find Mor.  
  
Hurting too in a different way, she grumbled at him for coming to her retreat.  
  
But quintessentially Mor, even in loss- arrayed in a gown like gossamer that would probably do even less good in the cold outside than bare skin, diamonds in her hair and flowers in ever room they passed- she still invited him inside.  
  
Cassian let himself be tugged around to see the shape of the manor- an ancient, rambling Night Court nobility holding that Mor had wiped off every map of the territory and remade in pale golden stone and plush comfort, ringed by half wild gardens and wilder ancient forest.  
  
A haven. A hideaway.  
  
Cassian wanted to hide from the entire world, himself included.  
  
A place beyond any domain he belonged in had felt like a good start.  
  
Mor eventually halted the tour before a roaring fire, moonstone fireplace shining rainbow in the welcome heat. The room she must have been in when he’d surprised her- started, page marked, and discarded books littered the hearth rug. A decanted bottle of red wine in readiness, a half empty basket of cookies from her favorite bakery in Velaris, abandoned.  
  
“Feyre brought them,” Mor answered his tired, questioned gaze with a smile, shimmying to an obsidian on electrum cart full of crystal to pluck up two glasses.   
  
Of course, Feyre had come to see Mor and ask for advice. Upon learning her traumatized, nearly suicidal sister had been missing for half a year. And brought cookies. Naturally.  
  
“This whole _Nesta thing,”_ She pointed at him with the glass she hadn’t just filled, “Not your fault, by the way, is a _mess._ ”  
  
Her warmth was a balm, if barely. Just familiar enough to soothe.  
  
Cassian waited for her to hand him the wine and fall onto the couch beside him before he spoke. Passing over her glass and leaning to accommodate as she tossed her long legs across his lap, Cassian let his head loll against the back of the couch and sighed. “She tell you she was coming to the mountains next?”  
  
Mor mirrored him, reclining against the velvet armrest. “For clues. Cauldron help her, but I don’t know why she’s surprised.”  
  
Cassian had to take a drink to hide was his face a doing, surprise a solid joy. Mor, who’d survive hell, of course-  
  
“I mean, Nesta was _always_ going to run. Good riddance. She hates all of us, someone else can watch her try to drink herself to death, Feyre doesn’t need that.”  
  
The wine is his glass looked like had been hit by a storm, the only actual sign he was aware of that Cassian’s hands had started to shake. “Good riddance?” He repeated.  
  
“Some people can’t be remedied,” Mor said, like she was commenting on the weather. She sank lower, scooting closer across to him. “God, poor Feyre, the Cauldron broke one sister and spit out the other one worse, I can’t imagine.”  
  
Cassian had the sharp, clear vision of exactly what Azriel would do hearing her. This beautiful house would already be in flames, if Lucien happened to be with him.  
  
“I don’t think Feyre blames the Cauldron,” Cassian managed to grind out, level.  
  
“Mhmm,” Mor agreed, sipping her wine. The blush of it remained red on her lips. His beautiful friend, who always had a laugh and an idea. “I’d never hurt Feyre to say it, but god knows I tried to keep Nesta occupied. Told her stay away from you, tried to point her toward doing something useful in the war.”  
  
All the air left the room in one.  
  
Cassian lost the sound of cracking fire, the soft sigh of Mor’s voice to the rising hammer of his heart.  
  
“ _You told her to stay away_?” Cassian had known there was contention- had never been able to deny the fact that these two women who were so immovably important to him were also diametrically opposed forces.  
  
His pulse beat so hard he could feel it in his wings.   
  
Numbly, Cassian pushed her legs off his lap. “Mor.”  
  
She set down her wine glass and huffed, breathing a cloud of blond hair out of her face. “I know, I know. But all she ever wanted to do was rip into you, she despised all of us so much. Every time we’d stumble on you and you’d get away as fast as possible. You were fighting Hybern, you didn’t need her bullshit.”  
  
The torrent of words said much more about the quantity of wine she’d already drunk over the course of the evening that any guilt on Mor’s part.  
  
Cassian couldn’t _breathe.  
_   
_Get away fast as possible-_ he’d stepped away again, and again, he’d been so scared. Nesta, an absolute. An ending- the one person in the world he most feared to fail and had again and again in that fear.  
  
“Tell me you didn’t.”  
  
Mor finally sat up, swinging her legs back down to carpeted floor. “It was cruel, but”-  
  
“ _Morrigan.”  
_   
“Feyre stood right there, I didn’t hurt her. I know they’re sisters and it’s complicated.”  
  
Cassian clenched his hands to still the shaking, a blind red tide of horror sweeping behind his eyes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t- _complicated? Mor._ You didn’t think- use your fucking gift Morrigan, right now _._ ”  
  
Her face crumbled, blinking those enormous gold brown eyes at him. “I don’t- Cassian, I’m not going to read you.”  
  
Cassian shook his head, eyes stinging. Siphon song sang softly in the tense air, his power reaching, hungry- searching for some threat to obliterate that could possibly make this right.  
  
“Than use the drop of your power that you don’t ignore. How you know when Rhys needs another drink, or Feyre is having nightmares again. You do it _all the time_.”  
  
She shook her head. “Cassian?”  
  
He stood up, he couldn’t- he couldn’t sit there with her and remain even slightly calm.

Nesta had always been viciously, horribly uncomfortable with the Court of Dreams. Feyre acted like it Nesta’s problem, and Cassian had never said _anything-_ how could she not be uncomfortable? Rhysand hated her, Cassian so terrified and trying to safeguard a shred of precious intimacy he barely spoke to her, and Morrigan had been warning her off the entire time.  
  
“She was my mate.”  
  
Beneath her tan Morrigan was pale, but she bit her lip, met his gaze moltenly. “The bond can be _wrong_.”  
  
Cassian couldn’t believe her.   
  
“No.”   
  
No- magic could be wrong, people could be wrong. The bond was the very filament his of soul, every hallowed part of himself that Cassian had managed to horde and hold onto through his brutal childhood: love and truth, fire and absolution. The bond was rightness- every hope and dream he could ever want.  
  
His mistakes were the problem.   
  
He looked down at her. His friend these long and hard years, glittering and irreversible. Mor, not _the Morrigan_. Truth was a weapon as much a salvation; Cassian was just as guilty as she was of being too afraid to see it.  
  
“But it can go wrong.”  


*** 

Time, it is said, is an ocean.  
  
Elain Archeron fell afraid into the Cauldron, and was given a gift as much as curse: the future is dark tumultuous depths and bright blue shallows, and never again, like the touch of the Cauldron’s waters, would she be a creature who could breathe just air.  
  
The first true seer known in four thousand years.   
  
She’d been lost, she’d been afraid- she’d swum out too deep and been pulled by the current in the wrong direction.  
  
In war, in fear, in trying to find a solution, Elain Archeron had flung her whole mind so far into the future she’d been trying to wade back for more than a year.   
  
Losing time, going through motions trained from childhood, resurfacing to panic and thank every god that existed that Azriel’s shadows could locate whatever timeline she was stuck on, that Lucien was her mate and her friend and could pull her back enough to breathe.  
  
Lucidity came more and more- her home, her gardens. Azriel who’d never thought she was crazy, Lucien who loved her the same fierce way she loved her own sisters.  
  
And then one morning, all at once, her feet touched the bottom.  
  
Elain, her mind full of the future, felt the present snap back into place all around her.  
  
She was distantly aware of what she’d been doing: smiling along and nodding to Feyre over an early morning visit, listening to her talk about art classes and drinking revolting rosehip tea she’d brought.  
  
She tallied quickly the cold fog outside her kitchen windows. Months gone, a seasons change.   
  
Crystalline. She was back, she was here- she could see the paths and how to stay now, finally.  
  
But the future had _changed_.  
  
Pink liquid sloshed as Elain set down her cup, unable to keep _smiling_. “Where is my _sister_?”  
  
Feyre blinked guileless blue eyes. Elain could practically see the thought- _Elain, poor crazy, broken, Elain._ She reached a hand across the table. “I’m right here. Elain, do you know where you are?”  
  
Elain swatted away her hand and snarled, “Where is _Nesta_?”  
  
Right in time for Lucien to winnow, sliding on bare feet over the stone floor, Azriel a step behind him, fully dressed and armed to the teeth. “Elain,” A laugh breezed through his sleep rough voice, “I felt- you’re _back_.”  
  
His embrace was like hugging a furnace, pure comfort.   
  
A happy shadow brushed her cheek, a restrained but equally triumphant silent hello from Azriel. It vanished as Feyre whispered, sotto voce, _like Elain wasn’t right there, “_ She keeps asking for _Nesta?”  
_  
Of course, then she refocused on what she found to be the most interesting part of everything, the bare brown arm still slung, companionable, over Elain’s shoulder. “Did you sleep here, Lucien?”  
  
Elain barely restrained the urge to roll her eyes. “Lucien always stays here when he’s in Velaris, Feyre.”  
  
Her baby sister was _palpably_ taking in Lucien- tousled, bare-chested, clearly just fallen out of bed- and drawing every wrong conclusion imaginable. Azriel’s sigh was nearly silent, but Elain heard it.  
  
“What did you _do_ to Nesta?” Elain asked, not an ounce of patience for Feyre’s matchmaking left after all this time. “Her whole future shifted, where is she?”  
  
Before Feyre could say whatever awful thing matched her scowl, Azriel cooly, softly cut in. “Nesta is safe and well.”  
  
The tension might as well have turned to spun glass.   
  
With a great heaving grumble, Lucien sighed and leaned down to kiss Elain’s forehead. “Breakfast, yes? I’ll bring it back. Pastries?” Instead of waiting for answer, he pivoted in place, pausing to ruffle Feyre’s hair before breathing a kiss- high as he could reach- beneath the sharp line of Azriel’s jaw.  
  
He winnowed before Feyre could say anything.   
  
Elain waited for the yelling.  
  
But Feyre just shook her head. “I knew it, _I knew_ you knew where she was. _Azriel_.”  
  
Azriel crossed his arms.  
  
A part of Elain- _furious_ , where the hell was her sister, _pleased,_ at least someone knew she was alright- wanted to sit on her kitchen table and let Az handle Feyre. But she owed Nesta more than that. “Her whole future is _shadowed_ , broken. What did you do?”  
  
“How is that my fault? She was a mess, I couldn’t watch anymore.” She twisted to look at Azriel full on. “Where did she go, Azriel?”  
  
“You haven’t answered Elain’s question.”  
  
With resemblance to their older sister that made Elain feel worse- Nesta would never, ever dismiss a member of their family- Feyre huffed a scathing breath. “We couldn’t just leave her here in the city, hurting herself. We sent her to the Illyrian mountains with Cassian.”  
  
No wonder Lucien had left- Feyre’s superimposed guilt was cloying in the air, choking. The adamant High Lady who’d done what she had to do, so _sad_ to see Nesta unhappy. So sad that she’d- the shadows whispered it for her, but Azriel was the one who said it aloud.  
  
“You _banished_ her.”  
  
Elain watched Feyre recoil and thought distantly, _good_. Feyre was the weight in the water that changed the current, a catalyst that tangled the ebb around Elain and Nesta both like a net.   
  
“You refused to bring her back!”  
  
Back straight, wings wide, the shadowed, beautiful man that stared back at Feyre might as well have been hewn from granite. The shadowsinger who’d lived in darkness, who’d been the bloody hands that accomplished every dangerous thing his High Lord had ever asked of him.  
  
“Nesta Archeron is not a subject of the Night Court,” Azriel recited, glacial. “She is not your ward. She has broken none of your laws and is out of harms way. Order me to drag her back, Feyre.”  
  
Behind her eyes, Elain knocked on the shut door between her mind and Lucien’s. Threw the memory of the moment in before closing the threshold; a distant echo of pride answered. Elain would always want Lucien’s happiness, she couldn’t foresee a better person to safeguard it than Azriel.  
  
“What I can’t imagine,” Elain cut in, her sister’s face growing increasingly, furiously red. “Is why you would send her anywhere with _Cassian_. The last time I saw her, he hadn’t bothered to speak to Nesta in a year.”  
  
“When you visited her, and had to be _hospitalized_?”  
  
Unfortunate for the argument, the sheer scandal in Feyre’s tone made Azriel’s mouth twitch.  
  
“Feyre,” Elain tried to say, normally, the ironclad knowledge that Az wouldn’t have told her Nesta was fine if she wasn’t a balm. Equally as soothing as the fact that Feyre was being _ridiculous._   
“How exactly is Nesta to blame for my being allergic to a rare fermented kelp blossom?”  
  
“She took you to a bar full of _sirens.”  
_   
“So?”  
  
Graceful immortal hands flung into the air, a kinetic fury that had been Feyre’s since childhood. “ _So? They eat human sailors, Elain,_ ” She hissed.  
  
“Only the ones with violence or evil in their hearts,” Azriel said, toneless.  
  
Feyre had taken a second home away from their sister- bought Elain an enormous house and left her alone in what Feyre herself perceived to be _madness,_ and run Nesta out of her city? Sent her off to a people who’d called her a witch, who reviled women with power; in the company of a man who what? Nesta _belonged_ to? Because destiny said so?  
  
Because Feyre couldn’t imagine any nuance beyond a mate bond meaning soul defining romantic bliss?  
  
But Nesta and Elain, who’d walked into a war at her behest, going to a bar full of dangerous- _less human resemblin_ g- faeries, who their sister ruled over. _That_ was problem.   
  
Elain didn’t stop her when Feyre stomped away and out of the house, front door slam echoing.  


***  


Shadow and darkness, Azriel had learned, could penetrate even the fathomless future.  
  
But it was impossibly welcome to feel them whisper, the swirl of power a continual maelstrom around Elain, to see her bright eyed and sharp in the chaos.   
  
On the worst days, she was something like a ghost: the motions and training of a woman raised to be a pleasant ornament to some human lords home, drained of the cleverness and fierce heart that made her Elain.   
  
That her younger sister wrote off the difference as madness made Azriel personally grateful Feyre hadn’t been Rhysand’s boon companion in centuries past, while Azriel was learning to speak to oblivion. _  
_  
As the slam of the front door carried through the house, Elain scoffed. “She’s still such a _teenager._ ”

The laugh boomed surprised out of him, easy despite the barely dissipated tension. “Twenty now, isn’t she?”  
  
Eyes nearly as dark as his own gleamed with sharp edged amusement. “Transformed her body at eighteen, perhaps she’ll always be a child.”  
  
Elain bustled to the table Feyre had set for her, making short precise work of dumping outthe tea, rinsing the pot with a tiny, utterly delicate sneer, and refilling the kettle. He’d crossed to follow her into the kitchen by the time she located tea that actually possessed caffeine, breathing in a happy sigh as she popped open the tin.  
  
“Nesta winnowed straight out of the mountains to the Day Court,” Azriel began, shadows assuring no one else would hear.“She’s safe. Joined the Order of the Ten Thousand Libraries.”  
  
Elain smiled. A ripple, a raindrop- she remained present, gleaming gold and uncounted hand-inked words flashing behind her eyes. “You visited her there.”  
  
Used to her uncanniness, Azriel inclined his head. “Helion can be trusted.”  
  
Elain was just as accustomed to Azriel knowing things that couldn’t be explained. She pulled down the larger, less painfully fragile teapot from its shelf, obliging allowing him to slide in place to pour the contents of hulking kettle and carry the tea outside to the garden table where they’d together spent countless mornings.  
  
They sat and as was their habit, conversed first in silence.  
  
Azriel was no telepath. There had never been an Illyrian daemati; the gift carried in Rhysand’s blood from his father, down a long line of High Lords to whom the mind was a flimsy defense.   
  
The dark came to him. A Shadowsinger’s gift was communication, it had to be used to garner knowledge.  
  
Elain, ephemeral as she was vital, lived with one foot in the future, one in the present or past.   
  
Her power swirled and eddied, his shadows whispering with delight between them.   
  
She was thinking, unsurprisingly, of Nesta.   
  
Safe, _yes_ , her gifts agreed. But the myriad of paths that had once laid before her were tenuous, the waters teeming with silt. Shadow at Elain’s behest shared without words what she could see.  
Nesta, in black gossamer, Day Court gold about her shoulders, fire-eyed narieth hunting cats at her feet. Nesta in healers white, hair twisted back with a pen. Nesta, gold at her neck and wrists and ankles, arm in arm with Helion, glowing like twin rising suns.  
  
Nesta, eyes lost to gold light, half screened by Cassian’s scarred wings.  
  
Cassian, bleeding from his eyes and nose and mouth, chained down and wings speared through, a sacrifice to a mountain god on an alter of obsidian.  
  
Azriel thought, _war?_

And the vision flickered, hurling them back centuries. Cassian’s young face, blood and sweat streaked, staring up at the stars. Rage, pain. He’d wanted the bond, wanted the legend to be true- wanted to imagine a world where he could deserve it.

A mate.   
  
Nesta’s sharp face flared back up- human this time, shaking with fury.  
  
The past reeled them back in- hope and brutal memory, Azriel’s own youth tangled with Cassian’s as history unfurled. 

Elain raised pale eyebrows in an approximation that made her look very, very much like her older sister. But her voice was gentle, soft as the faint spring sun. “He loved you.”  
  
“We loved each other.”  
  
How could they not have? The savage longing that made Illyrians, the greedy affection of two orphan boys who’d never truly had anyone all their own but each other. Ancient history, nothing Azriel could regret or be ashamed of; love, a long different thing now, had kept them alive.  
  
Not ancient to Elain, he knew, who cared for her sister’s interest in the tangled web of their history with the same viciousness with which she safeguarded her own chosen bonds: Lucien, and Azriel himself.  
  
“We were the same,” He explained, matched her tone. “Rhys was a brother, but not- no one could ever forget he was more than we were, more than an Illyrian.”  
  
Elain reached out to cover one of his hands with hers. “You and Cassian were the only Illyrians in history to need so many siphons.” She finished for him, simply.  
  
Need-it had been a need- past the dark that he faded in and out of, his natural element; the killing power in Azriel’s blood had been unrivaled, but for Cassian.   
  
Who’d been just as afraid, just as proud, of what they were.   
  
Shadow whispered, soft and invisible as they liked to be in this place, in Elain or Lucien’s company. Telling him of the sped up, tangled images Elain’s gift was throwing at her: Cassian, teaching Azriel to fly. Scarred hands in dark curls by firelight. The careful bandaging of freshly tattooed skin with stolen supplies. Laughing brawls, grins with bloody teeth that turned to bloodier kisses. Cassian’s smaller, younger smile, the one he’d spent decades afraid to let people see.  
  
Elain squeezed his hand. “A good first love.”  
  
Azriel nodded. Cassian had been his best, truest friend for centuries. That they’d once been two bruised, broken boys who’d had to learn softness together was a part of that, even if they hadn’t remained lovers.  
  
A better first love, Azriel knew, that Elain herself had been afforded. He would have done several unspeakable things to go back in time and somehow give her that; not a mortal man who’d throw her away, but someone kind who’d adore her with all the force of a thunderstorm.  
  
Not that she needed it- Elain saw her own future best. She knew exactly where she going. Lucien had confided in him she dreamed of _gold:_ woven like silk, metal and gems in impossible craftsmanship that could only have come from a few kinds of fae.   
  
Gifts of courtship, devotion braided in her hair- it wasn’t waiting for her in the Night Court.  
 _  
Close close close,_ shadow sang happily, alerting him of Lucien, a street away.  
  
Elain idly tilted her head in the same direction, smile half on her lips. “Where’s Morrigan in all this?”  
  
Where the past became as tangled as the future.  
  
Azriel squeezed her hand back before letting go, took a heartbeat to breath in the floral steam of the tea she always made. Bergamot, vanilla, cornflower, mixed with Dawn court black tea. Acidly strong, beautifully sweet.  
  
“You have to understand,” Azriel began, “That we might have been just barely grown by faery standards, we were all _incredibly_ young. Cassian and I were separated on assignment, weren’t together for a year.” A year of splendor and chaos for Azriel- spent in the Court of Nightmares.  
  
“There was bidding war for Mor’s hand at the time. Rhysand’s father sent me back to the Steppes to keep her safe- to get close, if need be. He was hoping Rhys would be interested in her.”  
  
Elain made a face. “Rhysand and Mor?”  
  
“Rhysand’s father was very…traditional.” He’d been a hard man in every way imaginable, but he’d also taught Azriel to be proud of what he was: s _hadowsinger,_ one of a kind. “It wasn’t difficult- Mor wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met. Bright and kind, fascinated by everything. We were fast friends.”

_“_ Cassian was jealous? _”_

Azriel was saved from the tangled truthful answer: Cassian had been jealous- they’d never had or wanted _anyone_ but each other. But not jealous the way Elain might be able to relate to- to be Illyrian was to freefall through the chaos of the sky. If there were no promises between them, they didn’t belong to each other.  
  
Lucien’s perfectly silent steps up the front path were interrupted by dropping his key, swearing, and catching it jangling in midair. From the front hall he winnowed to them, still-steaming pastries in a bag bigger than his head.  
  
“Tell me the bloody cavalry isn’t coming, I’m not going back for more.”  
  
“Feyre went home,” Azriel told him, a cue Lucien took to fall into the seat neat to him.  
  
Elain, meanwhile, had waylaid the bag. “You needed fifteen almond pastries?”  
  
The look Lucien cast toward him was returned, easy of breathing.   
  
He flicked the bag from her grasp and grinned, fanged and teasing. “At _least_.” After deftly plucking out the one apricot- special ordered- and handing it Azriel, he stole Elain’s hovering hand and planted a smacking kiss on the back of it. “You love almond, I developed a fondness, petal.”  
  
Because Elain was _Elain_ , that didn’t work at all, but she smiled none the less and turned questioning eyes on Azriel.   
  
“For a little while,” One terrifying month, so incoherently flung forward she recognized no one around her, “They were all we could get you to eat.”  
  
To her credit, Elain was able to shrug it off. The surety of the strongest psychic of their age: in where she was going, in the people who loved her.   
  
B ond or shadow both, Lucien’s eyes turned serious above his carefully mischievous mouth. “You know, I have always wanted to know why Feyre seems to think you’re in love with _the Morrigan_.”  
  
Elain scoffed into her teacup, all the wonderful withering humor that disappeared when she’d flung her mind away. “Feyre is in love. She wants everyone else around her to be just as happy, but she hasn’t yet learned to pay attention to things like _preference_.”  
  
Lucien snorted.

“I had noticed that,” Azriel said dryly, shoulder brushing Luciens, warm as a hearth fire in the misty morning.  
  
Neither asked, no push to continue beyond what he chose, despite the burning force of Elain’s curiosity sending shadows to soothe and play in her hair.Future as temporal as darkness- they loved her for herself, but sought Lucien solely for Azriel’s benefit.  
  
Azriel drew a deep breath, and continued. “Cas and Mor weren’t ever together, not really. Morrigan knew she was about to be betrothed, she wanted to make one choice that was just hers. Why not the strongest Illyrian of the generation? Wild, tamed by her.”  
  
“ _Tamed,_ ” Lucien repeated, the full burr of his Autumn accent coming out while Elain’s nose scrunched in answer.  
  
Azriel liked it about as much as they did. “For Cassian it was something else entirely. A woman with royal blood, seeking him out? Because he was powerful? He’d been told his whole life that power shouldn’t be his, that it was dirtied by being carried in his veins. Of course he said yes.”  
  
“And,” Elain inserted, shrewdly, “If she was looking at him, she wasn’t getting closer to you.”  
  
“It didn’t matter.” Azriel shook his head, the worst part always, always where he lost his voice. Horror or anger, easier than failure. “I finally had a position to prevent the _brutality_ I was surrounded by- but Morrigan’s own family came for her."  
  
Softly, Elain finished for him. “So you’ve watched out for her, her whole life. So it never happens again.”  
  
He couldn’t control his tone, ice that came from the dark his soul was bound with. “She was my charge, _sworn_ to my protection, and I failed. It took days to find her.”  
  
Tacitly, Elain looked away, out into the garden, just in time for Lucien’s fingertips to brush Azriel’s cheek. It took a long, drawn out moment, before Azriel could lean into the touch, warm calluses bringing him back to the present.  
  
“It wasn’t your fault,” Lucien whispered, soft as much as there was directionless fury in his voice. “You got her back. You protected her and anyone who needs it, ever since.”  
  
Sometimes, Azriel couldn’t even look at him. Lucien, who saw his nightmares and bloody hands, who never flinched from the shadows or left behind the thought that Azriel, despite everything, was a good man.  
  
Elain drifted to her feet, walked to the rose bushes and began plucking up stems, a ruthless pair of scissors summoned to hand.  
  
In the privacy- not that they needed it, Azriel was ashamed of a hundred things about himself, but never this- he turned his face to kiss Lucien’s palm. His answering smile was blinding.  
  
Mist had rolled in from the sea, salt all but hiding the promise of warmer weather to come. Coaxed by Elain’s hands- and a touch of Lucien’s power, in secret- the garden before them belied that, already on the brink of full spring bloom.  
  
“Are you going to take her to Nesta?” Lucien murmured eventually, quiet between them a settled, comfortable thing.  
  
Azriel dipped his head. “Will you come?”  
  
The rueful version of that sun bright grin appeared, crinkling the corners of two mismatched but equally golden eyes. “I’ve never been allowed entry to the Day Court. Some old bad blood, I’m afraid.”  
  
Acquiescence was a kiss, sharp teeth slipping against Azriel’s lips. Lucien, he knew, would be perfectly fine holding off Feyre, if need be. He’d break into one of Azriel’s safe houses if he got too annoyed.  
  
Elain had moved on to hyacinth and jasmine, and a pale floral armload growing at her feet. Shadows danced just before she called to them an elation that said she was _seeing-_ “Nesta needs flowers!” _  
_

***

The Illyrian civil war started, like nearly every important, cataclysmic thing in Cassian’s life, with Nesta.

At least for him.   
  
For his enraged High Lord it went something like this- Cassian, attacked and left for dead in what was meant to be a neutral zone between stalled aggressors. A call for arms, an excuse for battle: what the opposition wanted was dangerous, and would only grow more so.  
  
Or so Cassian heard, leagues away when the Rhysand made the call.  
  
Nesta Archeron returned to the Illyrian mountains like a vengeful sunrise, bringing light and heat that briefly blinded Cassian.  
  
Blinking in the dark, auras of fire out of his eyes, Cassian thought he was hallucinating right up until the moment a dainty silk slipper hit his calf.  
  
“ _Nes_?” The syllable slurred, somehow embarrassment the strongest thing he could feel past astonishment, past the sweeping numbness.  
  
It might have had something to do with the blood loss. Illyrian bodies were built for war in many ways, same as they could tolerate freezing cold or the brutal strength of stormy skies. Shock would have stopped the pain- _stopped his brain for a minute_ \- but Cassian wasn’t that lucky.  
  
“Nesta?” He tried again.  
  
She was tying the sash of a robe around her waist, precise and vicious. “ _No._ ”  
  
His cheek in the dirt, Cassian contemplated the possibility of sitting up- driving the knife deeper into his guts- to see her face better. “I’m so sorry. For everything. For the Illyrians. For Mor. For everything that”-  
  
Nesta reached out, faster than he could see in the dark, and pulled a dagger out of his shoulder with wet squelch. “ _Shut up_ , Cassian.”  
  
A part of him had honestly thought he’d never hear her say his name again. It had been a year- he’d stopped trying to remember, unable to find when he’d heard it in her voice last.   
  
Which he didn’t realize he’d said aloud until she poked at that superficial shoulder wound and dropped to the ground. “I’m going to live forever, you thought I was just never going to say your name again? _Ever?_ ”  
  
When he tried to reply, tongue to heavy in his mouth, her scent blinding him to the world- Nesta was here, Nesta was touching him, _Nesta_ -

“S _hut up_.” She held up a hand in midair, summoning to being… a men’s leather belt? “Were you planning to lay here and bleed to death? On purpose? You _stupid fucking prick_ , what were you doing? Why didn’t you fight back?”  
  
“Was jus’a kid,” Cassian groaned, around the brilliant starburst pain of Nesta tightening a tourniquet around his thigh.  
  
A little, starving girl with huge hazel eyes and the sharpest face he’d ever seen on an Illyrian. There wasn’t a world in which Cassian would have hurt her- or any young one, or any Illyrian at all, for that matter.  
  
“A child stabbed you the shoulder, dropped to the ground to slice your femoral artery, and then left a second knife in your stomach?”  
  
An Illyrian child. An orphan, like Cassian. Like the hundreds left without families after the war, who Cassian had _failed_.

More cognizant, later, he’d wonder with an awe that hurt, at the perfect, pinpoint accuracy of Nesta’s assessment. Like she’d felt the blows herself.  
  
Nesta clenched together her blood slick hands and made a noise Cassian could recognize as pure aggravation. Sparks, he was reasonably sure not hallucinated, danced from her fingertips into the cold night air.  
  
“I’m not a healer,” She said briskly. A hundred feelings hid in that tone, and Cassian knew- and hated- that he didn’t deserve to know a single damned one of them. “I’m going to cauterize the worst of it.”  
  
His heart shouldn’t have leapt at the thought of her hands on him.   
  
Agony that was her due. Nesta’s power, alive on Cassian’s skin. All this time- all the failure that lived hot in his blood and pumped shame into his heart every day- Cassian wanted the pain, wanted her, wanted it to be hers.   
  
Fire kindled between her palms, the blast of heat sending tendrils of her hair flying.  
  
She was the most beautiful thing in the world.  
  
Even through his gurgled scream.  
  
As quickly at the light came, Nesta was done, sitting back on her heels beside him. “If a full grown warrior had walked up and stabbed you in the gut, you wouldn’t fought back then _either._ ”  
Panting on the ground, the phantom touch of her hands on his body a wholly different fire, Cassian didn’t say anything.  
  
Of course he wouldn’t have. The very thought of raising a sword to any of his beloved, mourning people made Cassian feel physically ill. On the brink of another war he didn’t know how to stop or end: Rhysand needed to regain control, the Illyrians needed their pride, needed to remember their roots, needed to rebuild themselves stronger from the dying embers that remained.  
  
Nesta Archeron had once told a High Lord of Prythian that Cassian might be the bastard that stood between his people and destruction.   
  
There was no greater Illyrian promise than loyalty. No higher honor.  
  
“Never,” Cassian breathed, half a laugh in his voice at how simple it was: her very presence, and Cassian knew exactly the terrible, right choice there was to be made. “Seen you use fire before.”  
  
Her face shuttered like a slammed door.  
  
“No,” Nesta said, terse, rising to her feet. “You wouldn’t have.”  
  
He wanted to stand. To do nothing more than be allowed to hold her hand and know that she was alive and well- to acknowledge, if even silently, that they were nothing to each other, and she’d still come to save him.  
  
She looked past him, to the faint promise of sunrise lighting the edges of mountain peaks. Continued to hide her eyes, giving Cassian all the license to stare at the glory of her face. “Don’t get yourself killed.”  
  
Nesta didn’t wait for his reply to vanish, the force her magic denting the very rock beneath where she’d stood.  
  
Cassian watched one last peaceful pink dawn from the territory that had birthed and raised him. Waited for his body to heal as it now could without the bleeding. Breathed deep into his lungs what lingered of Nesta’s scent.  
  
A woman who would rather die than leave behind those she loved. Would rather fight to the death than do the wrong thing.  
  
He couldn’t be with her now. Couldn’t take back the mistakes he had made. But he, like any Illyrian, could reach for that high honor: glory, loyalty.  
  
By the time the sun was high in sky, Cassian was gone. Hale and whole, swift wings took him to the heart of his long-troubled homeland, straight into the camp of starving rebels.  
  
And so, Nesta’s touch a brand, her legend a promise in his heart, Cassian went to war against his High Lord. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: ALL THE NESTA. Sentient library that loves her!! A year of healing and being a sarcastic shit to Helion (he likes it). Why does Nesta need flowers? Did she almost leave Cassian to die? Hey, isn't Helion's face weirdly goddamn familiar?


	3. Resurrected

It took, by Nesta’s count, fifteen hours for the Night Court to find her.  
  
Sunlight spilling over her face woke her; the warmth foreign enough that for a moment between sleep and waking, Nesta felt nothing at all but it: Safety. Welcome daylight. Like the dreams she’d once had years ago.   
  
But there was no accompanying, larger body in the bed.   
  
No slower, strong second heartbeat ghosting after her own beneath her ribs.  
  
Nesta Archeron woke up alone in bed built for one, in a tower pulled from her dreams, and exhaled. The skylight overhead had turned the first blush of dawn to heady gold, dazzling unevenly over her skin that spoke of bubbles in the glass. No wind blew. Distant birds and voices were only soft sounds, happy as a held, anticipating breath.   
  
For a perfect eternity, that was all she felt.  
  
Nesta, alone.  
 _  
Free.  
_   
A still emptiness like she herself was one the lakes famous in this central territory, fathomless and calm, painted over by the rising sun.   
  
She was _herself._   
  
She was a ghost, floating lightly down the stairs to her kitchen that looked like a fairytale.  
  
Nothing touched her.  
  
Nesta drifted to the kettle, sighed over tea, and filled a steaming mug with the least floral thing she could find before her heart began to make itself known. The beat came out of nowhere, anxieties crawl beneath her breastbone- but still, also, so strange she barely recognized it at all, _anticipation._   
  
She didn’t bother going outside.  
  
On bare feet, Nesta merely stepped forward. How she’d known she couldn’t explain: the Library opened to meet her, stride landing her inside a collection so old she could smell dust and volcanic ash on the shelves.  
  
Scrolls and books. Enchantments and lost dreaming things.  
  
An archive, she knew, the shape pressed into the back of her mind and muddled out, where the Library had forgotten words.   
  
A lost thing herself, Nesta walked the dark halls barely breathing.  
  
She would admit only to herself, later, but the fifteen hours probably had more to do with Azriel’s graced manners than effort. If he hadn’t known the second she landed, Nesta would be surprised.

But first Nesta wandered on silent feet through shelves that reordered before her eyes, through stacks that hadn’t been touched in centuries, and froze like prey, at the sight of Illyrian wings.

Nesta had forgotten she could see in the dark, until her legs stopped moving and her cold heart hammered to life. She could _see_ \- but he was shadowed, color lost in to dim underground.  
  
All Nesta saw was massive, beautiful wings and thought: _Cassian.  
  
Cassian.  
_  
The smooth syllables bubbled up in her mind without Nesta’s consent, the name she’d refused to say in more than year. The shock of it traveled straight to her painfully thudding heart until she had to rest against a towering shelf, her grip on the wood splintering.  
  
Cassian. He’d actually come for her. Nesta's whole chest hurt. _Cassian had_ \- Cassian had actually come after her?

_Cassian, Cassian, Cassian,_ it was the beat of her heart. Surprise that was pain, agony that burned straight into heat.

_How dare he follow her here?_  
  
Where was he when Nesta staggered off a battlefield, drenched to the skin in his blood? How could he follow her to freedom but not chase after her when her father died? _When they’d nearly died together?  
  
In other life, we’ll have our time. I promise. _They were immortal, they had nothing but time. _  
_  
Where was he, when the strength of her faeries senses was so overwhelming Nesta tried to not even _breathe_? Where had Cassian been, when she was so numb she couldn’t even be angry, when she couldn’t make herself rise from bed for months?  
  
When the live wire in her chest grew colder and colder, until it ceased to exist.

_What gave him the right?  
_  
But then the room flared to fill with light, the call of her will, and Nesta couldn’t see a single scar. The pale spiderwebbing across wings that had been left behind by Hybern. The tinge of red across her vision that echoed the eery howl of siphons that even her hatefully focused senses couldn’t hear.

_The wicked curves, the color, the height-  
_   
Nesta raised her chin, and faced the Shadowsinger of the Night Court as he turned.  
  
“Tell my sister I’m not a pet to be returned to kennel.”  
  
To her credit, fuel to the fire raging beneath her ribs, Azriel blinked. Black brows drew together in what would have been a vicious scowl on a less handsome face, oddly gentled by the uptick of his mouth.  
 _  
Bemused?  
_   
Nesta’s nails were biting into her palms, but she wouldn’t- not a trace of fear would meet the detection of those shadows, draw pity from this darkly kind man. “Tell your _masters_ I’m not coming back. Ever.”  
  
The Library shuddered at her tone.  
  
A hulking hardwood and bone chair crashed into the back of Azriel’s knees. Nesta refused to flinch at the sound.  
  
With a heavy sigh, Azriel sat. He waited a moment, as though anticipating the Libraries next attack- Nesta could feel it, on the edge of her mind and was too panicked to revel, _the libraries would kill for her-_ before sagging forward, elbows on his knees, scarred hands dangling.  
  
“I came to apologize.”  
  
When Nesta didn’t unwind, Azriel’s right hand twitched- _sword arm_ , Nesta noted, distantly, Truthteller bound to that thigh- bobbing in agitation.   
  
“I objected,” He said finally, deep voice graven, “But I should have stopped what happened, every step of the way. You did nothing to earn banishment.”  
  
It was very nearly the most animated she’d ever seen the shadowsinger, outside war.  
  
Nesta hadn’t failed to understand that there was a fracturing here too- Azriel who was duty personified, but avoided Rhysand and her sister’s elaborate plays at family like a plague once he’d had something to call his own. Who would have taken on an entire enemy encampment to get Elain back, orders be damned. Who watched the Morrigan’s back, but wasn’t a complacent part of her antics.  
  
But still, she couldn’t stop the words. “I am not your _responsibility_.” _  
_  
Horribly, respectfully, he nodded. “No. But you are family- and no more broken than Elain is mad.”  
  
It hurt to _breathe.  
  
“You won’t,” _Nesta hated the halting, raw sound of her own voice. As it was Azriel had gone rigid once more, the immutable face of shadows in place of the twitching intensity. “You won’t tell them where I am.”  
  
Azriel stood and carefully walked toward her, stopping a full foot from the hem of Nesta's skirt. Nothing to an Illyrian reach, everything to her fragile rage that wanted to shake her whole body apart confronted with his towering height. “Only Elain, if you wish.”  
 _  
How_ Nesta wished- but Elain needed Azriel, _needed Lucien,_ needed time. _  
  
“Yes,”_ She said too fast, razor sharp. “Elain. Lucien. No- no one else.”  
  
The respect of Azriel’s inclined head was long foreign and utterly sincere. “If you need anything, ever, say my name to the dark and I will come, Nesta. No matter how far, or if centuries have passed- if you need an escape I will find it.”  
  
Nesta seethed in the shadows of Illyrian wings and wanted to snap back, _she’d had enough of promises._

No amount of blood had made them true.

But Azriel, who’d disobeyed Feyre, who adored Elain-  
  
“You were imprisoned, once.” Nesta said, tilting her head.  
  
The only visible metric of his surprise- bright in the air to her ruthless alien nose, it smelled _crushed,_ peppercorn to the nearly cinnamon scent that carried naturally on Azriel’s skin- was a muscle jumping on his jaw.  
  
The correct identification calmed her just enough the library changed gears, and the books began to come. Without Helion’s warning it would have been nearly comical; with the thousand libraries alive in Nesta’s bones, it was fascinating.  
  
Autumn Court romances. Ancient combat techniques. Gold foundry. The Vanserra family tree, in miniature over a leaf of pure ruby.  
  
Azriel swallowed. “For more than a decade, for the _burden_ of my birth.” _  
_  
Six more books joined the pile around him- Autumn courtship. Curses. Hair-braiding. Folklore of the Autumn hills. 

“Did you escape?”  
  
A final gift, a warning, a pike sang through the air to slam into the floor, an inch from Azriel’s wings. Neither recoiled.   
  
“No,” Azriel admitted, in that impossibly deep voice of his, “But you did, to the safest place in Prythian. When they realize you’re gone, I won’t drag you back. You have my word.”  
 _  
An Illyrian’s word is his bond_ , Nesta had read.   
  
Honor and starsteel, the last vestige of a truly ancient civilization brought to heel by Rhysand’s ancestors. Their personal blades guarded like their hearts themselves, their promises marked in blood and ink the remainder of what had once been a millennia of tradition.   
  
She’d certainly had plenty of wasted ichor where words should have lived.  
  
But this Illyrian was just as hated as Nesta was. A demon to her witch, the strongest of his generation it they’d only bothered to count him.  
  
Nesta met Azriel’s gaze. “Keep Elain safe.”  
  
And just like that, silent acceptance offered and recognized between them. Azriel didn’t need to say he’d die before harm came to Nesta’s sister, that he’d safeguard her mate like the love he was to him. A tiny, precious family- they could be there for Elain when Nesta couldn’t, and that, at least, she could trust.  
  
Elain would be safe. From the world- from the High Lord and Lady of Night who’d declared her unsound.  
  
After all, from the auspicious height of her _perfect_ royal ruling union, Feyre hadn’t even noticed Nesta was gone. 

She picked up the book on braid patterns, library power tingling through her fingertips. Nesta passed it to Azriel in a thank you she couldn’t say aloud. “Vanserra will light his own hair on fire, given half the chance.”  
  
Autumn fashion was a fixed point in Prythian’s High Courts. Night changed, Day progressed, but Autumn dressed like faeries of old: their clothes the colors of the forest, living things reshaped into garments. Rivers of silken, tumbling hair a pride, an outward sign of great age.  
  
Banishment, a war, and switching sides- Lucien still couldn’t bear to cut his.   
  
As the book left her hand to his, life glimmered over the cover. The gold and black seal of the Ten Thousand, unfolding across the cover. Nesta didn’t question that she knew it would come home, whenever it was no longer needed.  
  
Azriel was halfway into the shadows that would take him back when he paused. “They won’t come after you,” He repeated, softer, quieter than before. “I promise.”  
  
And then Nesta was alone, in the warm cocoon of knowledge men would kill for.  
 _  
They won’t come after you.  
_  
She had not imagined a world where Feyre would rouse herself from painting and rebuilding to _personally_ find her. Order her location. Arrive to cry and forcibly demand Nesta’s return like property. Physically drag her back with the aid of Rhysand’s monstrous strength and say it was for her own good because Nesta couldn’t be trusted to make choices.  
  
A crown on her head had only strengthened her sister’s _particular_ graces.   
  
Nesta stepped back into the shadows of shelves and continued her solitary journey.

***

Five days later, Helion Spellcleaver found her drinking in a sacred fountain.  
  
She’d asked for sanctuary and been given it. The Library closed to all visitors as Nesta wandered restlessly, aimless steps taking her through the mirror-like doors to countless havens.  
The Ten Thousand- a more literal name that she’d come to expect from grandiose High Fae.  
  
Not ten thousand buildings, exactly, but at least ten thousand separate collections. Books upon books upon books- knowledge that couldn’t be imagined, stories of dreams that minds hadn’t been born to dream yet.   
  
They whispered to her, pages rustling with affection.  
  
Nesta never wanted to leave.   
  
Abandoned labs from ancient alchemy, tombs of primordial fae overrun with gold and stories scrawled onto the faces of gems. Enormous public buildings clearly in Day, full of fiction, stories for children, cookbooks and magic and song. Collections housed in palaces that seemed to exist in other worlds, whose locked windows bared only a sea of stars.  
  
Ink that fell like rain in rooms of glass to form poetry in languages long lost.  
  
She walked for days, pausing only occasionally to rest or drink. Every time she stopped moving, stopped touching the impossible treasure that surrounded and spoke to her, Nesta was afraid she’d blink and be gone.  
  
Back in the North, wind screaming around her like the cries of the dying.  
  
Cold down to her lifeless bones.  
  
Afraid that if she slept she’d wake to it all a dream: back in Velaris running down a list of toxins to see what they’d do. Back on the battlefield, dark Illyrian blood coating her so thickly Nesta would taste it for days. Back over the Wall, planning Elain’s wedding and knowing, sooner or later, she’d be marched unwilling down the aisle herself.  
  
The Library, warm as sunlight, remained.   
  
Plusher cushions appeared beneath Nesta when she sat. Glasses of sweet bubbling cordial whose taste was so mild she could tolerate it. Steaming tea, cookies the Library didn’t press upon her when they went ignored.  
  
It was so beautiful it _hurt._  
  
The coil of fear refused to unwind.  
  
She touched spines but not pages. Dreaded with a pulse thudding in her head that the irreplaceable paper would crumble to entropy beneath her hands. Flame. Dust. The windows to Day and glorious nowhere would shatter.  
  
She was a death, she was destruction, she’d been _destroyed._   
  
How could this story of stories _exist_? Nesta’s heart ached, but her brain tenaciously raced ahead- asking _how, why?_ Trying to measure what could be saved if she lost control. Attempting to guess how much she could read and see before she was dragged away.

But nothing broke.  
  
The Library chose no books for her as it had Azriel. Instead, it opened every door. Gently pressed like a flower unfolding it’s secret ways and deepest mysteries. A world. An evocation. The repository of knowledge for an endless immortal people.  
  
And Nesta was the _Librarian.  
_  
The Library whispered it to her. No words, but half shaped visions full of emotional weight, a watercolor blur of lives once lived. It had lost words- forgotten how to shape things adequately to voice without possessing her brain. But it wanted her to _know_ -

The Librarian was a _sanctity._ The Libraries heart and sword, the outside worlds conduit and living reminder.   
  
There had been hundreds once.  
  
A calling that pulled scholars from their tutelage and storytellers from their pages. Drawn like moths to flame, but the greatest librarians were more like Nesta: accidents.   
  
Men who’s eyes had strayed too longingly to the horizon, only to find the hunger never ceased. Women who bled a _little too much_ magic, wonder and strangeness spilling over into their gardens, their kitchens, the stories they told their children. Orphans plucked up from hardship because they’d closed their eyes and wished.  
  
All fae were magic by human standards, but faeries of the Libraries and the citizens of Day _believed_ in magic.   
  
Eventually, Nesta followed sunlit windows out onto a roof and found herself in the heart of a city that seemed to be more than half plants. The other half was Daystone- more malleable than marble, gold shot but still _natural,_ every shade of healthy earth and stone.  
  
Weary, paralyzed with wonder at the _feeling_ of real sunlight on her face, Nesta watched.  
  
She was the only Acheron sister who’d ever been to the continent, seen any of the great cities of men. Nesta had been a small child, but she remembered: cobblestone and church domes, palace spires and labyrinthine markets.  
  
It had been a small irritation that grew into disbelief, to wake up in an alien body in the largest metropolis in Prythian, and find that the City of Starlight was _ordinary._ Velaris was just that, a city. A beautiful one, even she could admit. Bursting with culture and food, a careless treasure trove of amusement bolstered up on ancient wealth.  
  
Nesta wondered if the City mimicked the High Lord, or the populace had shaped Rhysand.  
  
Faeries in the North used their power primarily like _weaponry._ It had confounded her, infuriated her- endless immortal years, more magic in a single breath than a whole human life could hope for, and they used it for pissing contests?  
  
They looked magic. They _were_ magic- but the city dwellers were about as wild or imaginative as Nesta’s youngest sister was observant.   
  
Power was everywhere she looked in Day.   
  
Will-o-wisps lighting shops, children growing bramble tangles at each other, women exchanging seeds in greeting that burst into single flower blossoms once touched. Solid, hammered circles of bronze on street corners Nesta watched as faeries of all kinds- not High Fae- appeared and disappeared from, some enchanted stand-in for winnowing.  
  
Families, winding their way through the tangled streets, to touch the hands of their small children to the walls of the building Nesta stood atop. She knew every name said, the press of every tiny palm.   
  
Not, Nesta realized, because she was _hearing_ it.  
  
The names echoed wordless from inside her head, a knowing. The Library needed life, Helion had told her- because it served the living. And so it knew every child that might one day need its knowledge, hummed softly to Nesta as adults wandered by and brushed fingertips to the closed doors, sent a pulse of magic into the stone to say _hello.  
_   
She watched as the sun rose high and lovers came, hand in hand.  
  
The Library struggled, transposed its meaning onto memory so that Nesta might understand. Nesta human, staring at batlike wings that flipped light back pink and red under ruthless morning brightness, fascination contained to oggling out the corner of her eye: the beautiful wounding sweep that led to broad shoulders.  
  
Novels in her hand.  
  
The only tea she liked in all of Velaris, in the North unbothered by lack of caffeine and completely enamored with idiotic flavors like sweetmint and lemon thyme, rosebuds with orange, a dark malty outlier.   
  
Hazel eyes that didn’t blink, watching green bleed into the gold, pupil widening like a pool of ink.  
  
Nesta stopped breathing.  
  
And all at once, the Library receded. She’d gotten the message anyway. Lovers- _first loves, great loves, forever loves_ \- who’d met within Library walls, came to share the feeling, for this heart of the world had been empty and mourning for fifty long years.  
  
As out of body as she’d been upon waking, Nesta stepped backward into the cool stacks, sun suddenly much too hot on her skin.  
  
Maybe- she hated the thought, _knew it wasn’t true_ , couldn’t fight it’s anxious flood as it spread like poison through her limbs- maybe if she’d been different, she could have had that.   
  
If Nesta were the sort of woman who smiled with ease. Who liked tea that flowered. Who didn’t stay up for nights and weeks learning poetry, reading epics, her heart understood by those long dead. Nicer. Hand in hand without feeling like a living torch.  
  
But that wouldn’t have been her.  
  
Would it even have been _great_ if it didn’t feel like potential _ruin?  
_  
Nesta would never know. _  
_   
A darker voice she’d deny whispered: she did know. _And it had burned and bound and been the best feeling in the world over_ , and she hadn’t gotten to keep it.   
  
Death and a warrior. Flame and air. Was it a tie or a circle, power fed on power, soul to soul? Did it even _matter?_  
  
Nesta would no more want an unwilling love than she had tolerated the thought of a wasted eternity.   
  
The subterranean tomb was one of the first places Nesta had found. She remained unsure if Library took her there as her skin suffused with _too much heat-_ or if she herself winnowed to the cool darkness.   
  
Could people even winnow in the Library?   
  
Nesta scoffed at the thought, not being _people_ herself.   
  
Instead of trying, she walked down the gilded hall. As long and once more over as a residential space, the walls were swirling, still hammer-marked sheets of gold. Spilled across the floor were two things: fountains the shape of blooms as pools, and more unset gemstones than Nesta had ever seen, stories scrawled across their mirror-polished faces.  
  
As it had before, three steps were all it took for the strange, distant overhead lamps to ignite. Amber light rebounded, made fiery with the shining walls and endless treasure.  
  
Nesta walked six more steps, and dropped herself backwards into warm water.  
  
She’d done this so many times- forced her brain and body to move past the _shockwave-_ that she instantly felt better. More numb, less incendiary, sky-burning rage: still the strongest and most true thing Nesta could feel at all.  
  
There was terror, shaking adrenaline: Nesta had nearly drowned herself before, trying this exact action again and again. Now, all that remained was a buzz in her veins and emptying of her brain.  
  
Nothingness. Electricity in her fingertips like nerve damage. Nothing- ebb and flow.  
  
She floated on her back, and asked the Library for a drink.  
  
Linen tag bleeding ink, a bottle of wine instantly bobbed in the water beside her, polluting the impossibly clean, clear pool with dust.   
  
On a different day, in a different moment, Nesta would wonder if the Libraries had their own cellar. Had she summoned it away from Helion’s palace stores? She might have carefully pried off the aged seal, noted the taste of cherries and chalk, red lush on her tongue.  
  
But the Library had made her remember, and Nesta had let it- and now she _needed it to stop.  
_  
The cork landed in a pile of emeralds, the variety of perfect greens hatefully noted by Nesta’s infallible eyesight.  
  
Green, green, green- it was all she’d longed for. A still peace. The scent of fresh cut grass and mist on leaves. Hazel eyes that simmered with heat and _loved her.  
_  
Nesta found purchase in the shallow edge of the pool, tipped back her head, and drank.  
  
Another bottle later, Helion found her.  
  
She’d felt him looking before. Helion had come to the Library several times over the last few days with the nebulous desire to see her settled and well. Nesta wasn’t sure she’d have finally obliged now if he hadn’t caught her off guard.  
  
She’d tried not to think about how the devastating High Lord was… _compelling._ Far more likable than the High Fae Nesta had largely had the misfortune of meeting.  
  
Gold flecks in the turquoise tile beneath and around her sparked to life as the High Lord of Day tripped over a pile of rubies the Library had dropped him into, a boom of delighted laughter echoing through the unnatural cavern.  
  
Grin flashing white, Helion strode toward her. “The Library is in _fine_ spirits.”  
  
Movement pure grace, that deep voice like honey, but in the end, it was the kindness that undid her.  
  
Helion didn’t ask, _why are you drinking alone?  
_   
Kept up what she was reasonably sure was actually a completely genuine smile as he took in her sodden skirts blooming around her like bruised petals, the doubtless disaster of her half-dried hair sticking to her neck and face.  
  
Shame coiled hot in her stomach, but Helion, like it was nothing, climbed in the fountain himself.  
  
Sat opposite her, and tilted back his head with a happy sigh.  
  
“Does the Library know how old this place is?”  
  
Nesta blinked. The answer didn’t even have to be reached for, it sat ready in the forefront of her mind. “Thirteen thousand years, give or take.”  
  
Helion made another pleased sound, ignored completely the ravaged sound of her voice that made Nesta herself want to wince. _  
_  
“The gold still remembers the sun,” He remarked. “It’s happy for company.”  
  
Not at all actually drunk, Nesta still found her mind drifting. When was the last time she’d had a normal, _uncomplicated_ conversation? That someone had spoken to her just to hear the answer.   
  
When they’d trusted the veracity of whatever she said.  
  
Her hands were shaking, sending out tiny currents in the water.  
  
“I believe the pools are aphora.”

Helion laughed again, sun bright. Not at her careful pronunciation, but in clear wonder. “Are they? I cannot say I’ve ever met a sky priestess, but that would explain the blue.”  
  
“There _are_ twelve,” Nesta said without thinking. “Each flower has six petals. Not that it makes _any_ goddamn sense for a solar goddess to be worshipped below the ground.”  
  
Helion straightened, water dripping down the muscled column of his throat. If he was offended by her tone, it didn’t show. Instead, he met her gaze, one corner of that wide smile tipping slightly higher in answer.  
  
And then he began a one-sided debate in agreement, talking about the warm water, the singing gold walls, the lights overhead that Nesta learned were called _sun tears._  
  
He didn’t mention her obvious tremors.   
  
Didn’t pull her out of the water. Try to dry her off, summon a healer, insist she find new clothing- _when did you last eat? You’re freezing. You’re bones and power pilled in too big dress. Are you ill? Are you hurt?-_ did none of the things every male Nesta had met of his species would have tried.  
  
It cracked something inside her- hot blood rushing to her skin.  
  
She interrupted Helion, who’d moved on to counting the precise golden stars at the base of the pool- _two sixty?_ He’d asked, voice thoughtful, or was _three hundred the sacred number?_ He just assumed she knew. And Nesta did, she’d known _human,_ mythology wasn’t protected knowledge. _Three hundred_ , she’d muttered back automatically, like it didn’t hurt to be seen and feel wonderful at the same time. _  
_  
“You haven’t asked me why I was banished.”  
  
Too sharp, too cold- but Helion’s gold gaze remained bright.   
  
“Escaped,” He corrected. And Nesta _froze. “_ The Library has never been wrong. But since Amarantha it has welcomed and aided no one but myself. It’s a _gift-_ I cannot imagine it is not also a lifetime responsibility, which I know something about. If anything, it’s I who owe you answers.”  
  
Silence was absolute, in this underground realm of the dead and their stories.  
  
Nesta _couldn’t_ - _  
_  
“ _Dear god_ ,” She said. “Do your courtiers kiss your feet when you speak to them?”  
  
And Helion _laughed.  
  
“_Not in governmental situations,” He shot back, water’s surface shaking with mirth. “And of course then feet are hardly my…first choice.” Helion didn’t soften- it would have been _unbearable-_ but a less playful surety took over that beautiful voice. “As you pointed out, we have _met_ , Nesta Archeron. And I know something about Illyrians.”  
  
She’d heard it many ways. _The Northern Wind. Barbarians. Dangerous animals. Savages._ But only one other High Lord Nesta knew had ever blended the last two syllables correctly into the smooth caress of the word.  
  
Nesta remembered a breakfast she’d had years to try not to think about, the morning after the High Lord’s meeting.   
  
She’d known this, in theory. At the time Nesta had other things to pay attention to than who and what Rhysand was lying about. The meeting was bad enough, the aftermath so horrible that even in memory, adrenaline crawled beneath her skin, burning hot.  
  
“You know Rhysand. You know _them._ ”  
  
It was a hiss.   
  
To be as truly charming as he was, Helion had to possess a shred understanding of people. Nesta found herself perversely grateful he asked no questions and needed, apparently, nothing to parse both who she meant and what the tone implied.

“Not well.” Helion admitted, letting water run out of his cupped hand. “Enough to know the bigger lie for what it is.”  
  
Carefully, _respectfully_ , he looked up to the horror her face was doubtless making. “Our paths crossed enough over the years to see how… _entangled,_ Rhysand’s chosen court is.”  
  
Nesta contemplating drowning herself. It wouldn’t work, but at least she’d be blessedly unconscious. Cornered, surrounded by kindness, words were already speared out of her mouth even welcome blackness couldn’t take back.   
  
What she’d done couldn’t be regretted, but _gods and blood and stars,_ did she wish fewer immortals with long memory had heard her speak in defense that day. _  
_  
“Weren’t you _entangled_ with the Morrigan?”  
  
Helion managed another one of those leonine shrugs. “I may draw a line between my heart and my body, but I have zero interest in being used for harm.” He smiled at her, warm as ever. “Even when that harm is _incredibly_ mis-aimed.”  
  
Despite herself, Nesta laughed. “Do you know, my youngest sister is completely convinced he’s loved her for _centuries? In silence. Azriel, who looks at women like they’re- they’re-”  
_  
Helion smoothly cut into the near hysteria. “Plants?”  
  
“Flowers, at least.”  
  
Helion laughed. 

“Even better, appreciable but not _wanted_.” He shook his head. “She is, _very young_ , is she not?”  
  
“Feyre?” Nesta didn’t even try to control her voice. Sank her head back into the warm water and tried to think of any way to say yes- _young, naive, and impetuously married to man six centuries_ her senior before she’d had a chance to find out who she was in peace. _Cruel and ridiculous and disloyal. “_ She’s barely more than a child, even by human standards. Nineteen.”  
  
Helion made a noise in the back of his throat that might have been horror. “That explains certain things.”  
  
Nesta, normally the recipient of Feyre’s meddlesome _graces_ , recognized the tone.   
  
“Don’t tell me, my darling sister decided you too, _had to be_ in love with the Morrigan?”  
  
Helion sighed. “Not exactly.” He rolled one shoulder, muscles visibly pulling from beneath the sodden ruin of his long linen shirt. “She made a _comment_ \- about loyalty. Having _apparently_ picked up on the fact that I have a mate.”  
  
It said nothing positive for Nesta’s self control that she wanted to flee. Winnow, even if the wards hurt her again. Snap something so terrible at Helion he’d never say the word to her again, much less speak to Nesta at all. Heat _pounded_ beneath her skin.  
  
She managed to grind out. “Feyre is _daemati._ Trained only by Rhysand, whose scruples are flexible.”  
  
“That makes more sense than I’d like,” Helion admitted, rings making music as he tapped a hand against the outline of the fountain, blue on gold.   
  
Nesta didn’t know why she asked- because it would _hurt?_ Because Helion was the only faery she’d ever met who didn’t say the word _mate_ like a human would say god? Because he was speaking to her like she wasn’t a mad, broken thing?   
  
Because there was, _undeniably_ , no one sharing the crown?

It came out anyway.  
  
“And have you also found the mate bond to be particular _bullshit?_ ”  
  
The tapping stopped. Nesta didn’t raise her head and Helion didn’t answer for a long, heart-pounding moment. _Ruined_ , the pain in her chest insisted, _fucking ruination, every time-  
_  
“It’s like that, is it?”  
 _  
“Empirically.”_

_***  
_ Helion Spellcleaver had lived long in the loneliness of wanting what he could not have. There was no one left alive who knew the shape his heart had chosen- the bond of fire in his soul rightful as the suns rise.  
  
A _secret_ \- but Helion was Day and love was meant to be shared.  
  
And Nesta Archeron, much like himself, had no one to tell.  
  
He reached for the wine bottle in her hand, pulling with as much slow gentleness as wouldn’t be _too_ emphasized, but would keep her comfort. Nesta pressed it into his grip with a small noise, hand-off splashing a wave of warm holy water.  
  
“Does it ever _stop_?”  
  
He could _smell_ her despair- _was the glorious general a moron? Was Rhysand insane? Where were her sisters?-_ but Nesta’s voice was perfectly controlled, the silk and iron of a trained diplomat coming out of the too-bony, but still beautiful face of a famine victim.  
  
High Fae could starve of things much more ephemeral than food.  
  
“No,” Helion answered, swallowing. “I have loved my mate every day since I met her, unchanged by distance or time. I always will.”  
  
Nesta, sharp as she’d been before the war, went for the obvious wound. “Heart, separate from body?”  
  
It took a moment for the raw tone of her voice to sink in- the same question others would ask, but a different shape. She was asking, _repeating_ \- that wry twist of loathing wasn’t for him.  
  
Helion was perfectly aware of his reputation. It was different in Day- the highest pursuit of his people was _comfort_. A life well lived was a life of glory: to deny the simplicity of pleasure was as ridiculous as to expect snow in summer if that was what a person liked. Everyone chose for themselves, and lived as they saw fit.  
  
Day did not lie with the heart or body.  
  
Helion’s dearest friends had been his cousins, he didn’t remember _how_ to do this. He wanted to tell Nesta the truth like it would absolve him, wanted to take her hand in comfort and promise no one here would ever touch her, if she didn’t want them to.  
  
One of which, she’d welcome.  
  
“Yes,” Helion met bloodshot silver eyes, blazing bright. “We live different lives. My heart will never belong to anyone else, nor will hers. But we are separate- she would no more leave the territory she loves than I would give over Day.”  
  
Nesta tilted her head, water dark tendrils of hair curling. “Eternity is too much to spend alone.”  
  
Helion heard what she meant, and smiled, the fullness of his senses bursting of bonfire nights and the scent of apple orchards. “I am never alone. That is the crux, the truth.” He shrugged. “Always and never- I cannot regret, but the years are long.”  
  
“You’re lonely?”  
  
Sharp as a knife. Helion wanted to make her smile. To winnow to Velaris and punch an Illyrian in the face and doubtless break his own hand in the attempt- even when she was mean, she sounded _so damned sad_.  
  
It was _wrong.  
_  
“Aren’t you?”  
  
And Nesta laughed. “Alone. You carry a bond, no? A heart in your heart, a voice in your head? A tie that cannot be _broken_?”  
  
She sounded bitter- she sounded a thousand exhausted years old _._

The Court of Dreams was a beautiful coterie. Famously glorious Morrigan, who’d rewritten the source of her sunless power into high walls of gold. Resolute danger, honor made handsome in the dark: Azriel. And always in step between the two, never alone, laughing, ferocious, Cassian.  
  
There was a reason, that when tempted, Helion had approached them only ever as a _group.  
_   
Nesta wasn’t done. “No chain, for me.”  
  
Helion had _been_ there- heard it recounted a dozen times after. That Nesta Archeron, the Cauldron born, had walked off the battlefield so drenched in Illyrian blood one would think she’d fought with her bare hands.   
  
She’d carried the head of a king.  
  
But behind her came the most feared Illyrian alive, body borne by his men.   
_  
Nesta had called him out of the sky_ , they whispered, _he’d crawled broken through the mud to her. Awaited death in her arms together.  
_  
Helion knew.   
  
Could only imagine where the end had lay if that were the middle- war could break even immortals. Nesta blazed too bright to be denied; he feared how that fire had faired against centuries of entrenched pretend, a concerted act that kept up the lie of a Court and all outsiders from getting close.  
  
Not just a moron- a fearsome general and a coward.  
  
“You are not a _shackle. And you’re not alone.”  
_  
Nesta stole back the bottle and _drank. “_ The Library _is_ already a more constant lover. Do you know, it’s forgotten how to speak? I often have that affect.”  
  
Real reaction swallowed down- her mate, her family, someone, had stopped _speaking_ to her?- Helion grimaced. He’d thought that, feared it. The office of High Lord was too separate from the Library.  
  
He could give it power, but not his heart.  
  
The Librarian makes the Library. She’d see it _sanctuary_ and strong, Helion knew it.  
  
Like she’d plucked up the thought from thin air, Nesta sighed. “I saw people, coming to say hello to the walls? I’m going to wake it up. Open everything. So much worthless valor and blood and _stupid backwards bullshit._ Prythian needs more books.”  
  
“Day,” Helion carefully drawled, “Doesn’t give a shit for valor.”  
  
And there, glint a knife throwing _daybreak,_ Nesta finally smiled for real.   
  
“What exactly, does Day _give a shit_ about?”  
  
He drummed his fingers on the pool’s edge. “Calling.”  
  
“ _Calling_?”  
  
“We are the Court of the Sun: change and bounty together. We believe the purpose of life is to find comfort, to live well. Everyone must chose themselves: scholarship or farming, no company or endless chosen clan. It can be anything.”  
  
Nesta Archeron, who’d been deprived of choice and turned fae famously against her will, cocked her head.“And for you, that is?”  
  
Helion was not even slightly ashamed that his palms are starting to sweat like the idiotic youth he hasn’t been in a long, long time. Nesta Archeron did not strike him as a woman who forgot- he wanted to say it right.   
  
Words mattered, and it isn’t just Helion that had a reputation outside his territory. _Court of pleasure_ , he’d heard said, like that was something to be ashamed of. Like pleasure couldn’t mean _anything,_ couldn’t be everything imaginable that wasn’t carnal- and immortals weren’t meant to use all that time to find joy and pride.  
  
“Keeping my people safe and happy,” Helion starts with. “Love. Finding out more about magic than the Lords that came before me. Company. Sitting in sacred fountains with the Librarian of our age.”  
  
“The Library could choose others,” Nesta pointed out, an afternote in her voice that seemed to indicate that would be a good idea.  
  
What the _hell_ had happened to her? The ruthless, clever woman who’d stared down Beron in defense of the man she loved like the High Lord was dirt beneath her feet. Dreamers were meant to dream, were they not? Did Nesta Archeron, who’d burn the world for a better one, not _qualify_?  
  
The Court of Dreams could keep their epitaph, Day had won in the end.  
  
“Why did you get banished?”  
  
Nesta raised her eyebrows and that tiny gleam of a smile grew. She numbered off charges on her fingers, water running down her pale hands diamond bright. “Well, I _dared_ dislike my sister’s husband. I bought drugs from several holy orders. Public intoxication. Illegal pugilism. I believe the deciding incident was a panic attack in a bakery, after my sister’s best friend wandered up, grabbed my hair, and started purring about how I should cut it.”  
 _  
Cut it._ Her light, contained tone didn’t hide the violence in her eyes.  
  
Helion, who’d had more rude High fae touch his hair without permission than most, understood. He could only imagine the full shape: she’d been kidnapped, hadn’t she? Her life, her body, taken from her.   
  
But even saying the words _panic attack_ , Nesta’s head was held high, her dripping braid a disaster and shaking hands unhidden.  
  
“Even better,” Helion purred, “That I didn’t give in to Morrigan’s advances. She has _terrible_ taste- your hair is a classic.”  
  
A natural crown, he’d thought when he saw her first, no adornment needed.   
  
At her laugh- tiny, cracked open, Helion carefully went on.  
  
“The whole point of what we believe here, is _choice_. As long as no one is hurting anyone else, Day will not judge you.”  
  
“ _Day_.”Nesta dragged out, “And what about you, High Lord?”  
  
“I do not have _room_ to judge.” A wind like roasted apples flutter across his mind, a voice that whispered: _a fine friend, she’ll be_. “And many questions. _Illegal_ pugilism?”  
  
Nesta drained the last of the wine and set it outside the pool with a resounding thunk. “I believe the betting broke several laws.” She quite suddenly hauled herself upright, water cascading from sodden skirts. “I’ll tell you about it, while you show me Day.”  
  
Helion sprang out of the fountain. Murmured a quiet, _may I_? And didn’t bother to hold in his grin as Nesta nodded in acquiescence and allowed him to dry them both off. “Show you Day?”  
  
“Might as well.”  
  
She didn’t take his arm, but Nesta met Helion step for step, out of the Library and into the brightness of late autumn afternoon in the green hills of Day. She tilted back her head, tendrils of hair floating free in the sunlight.  
  
“After all,” Nesta continued, like she’d never paused speaking. “The Library needs to remember life.”  


***  
Four months after she’d run from frozen exile, the High General of the Night Court sent Nesta his sword and siphons.  
  
An apology that _transcended apolog_ y as only an Illyrian would make it, an extreme that keened through Nesta’s blood.   
  
Not the weapons he’d worn the last time she’d seen him. What he’d carried into war and relied on to keep himself, and eventually her, alive. A promise writ in blood and regret, meaning as faceted as the shattered siphons still bound in gauntlets: _my safety is yours, my life is yours, my honor is as broken as this blade, but it is yours.  
_  
Nesta sidestepped a border dispute and winnowed straight to windswept Summer, to throw the lot- the massive blade Hybern had broken, seven keening gems that pulsed in her hand- straight into the sea.  
  
Heart racing painfully, she went back to the libraries, and set on fire the dress she’d worn to escape for good measure.  
  
Safety. Honor. What the hell did either matter? Where had that implied safe harbor been when she’d been thrown out of her _home_?  
  
Dragged to his- where she could never, ever belong, and no expected or wanted her to. _  
_  
Sitting crosslegged on the floor before the smoldering remnants of cloth, facing a window the Library had providing when the world began to feel _too small,_ Helion found her, chest heaving with rage.  
  
Proof that he was the wisest High Lord, he stayed back.  
  
Nesta raked through burning embers and waited to feel anything that wasn’t a _horror._ The motion would have had her crying in pain as a mortal; instead her monstrous body took it in stride, fire searing open the skin of her palms only for it to knit back together, whole and unscarred, in the space of her next breath.  
  
A whole coal, white ash clinging in her grip. Ruined flesh, perfect skin- abomination.  
  
“Do you ever just _destroy_ things?” The question burst out of her, nothing near what she wanted to say. The backlash of composure forced her spine back to comforting straightness, her shoulders back, but Nesta’s harsh tone still hung in the air.  
  
Helion, who’d sunk down to the floor with her, propped up his chin with an elegant hand, arm draped over one drawn up knee like art.   
  
“Yes.”   
  
Nesta tipped the burnt out coal from her hand. What he was apparently waiting for in that unflappable, utterly accepting way of his. Three shades more gentle or caregiving, and Nesta would have despised him.  
  
Helion called upon none of her seething hatred. The opposite, in fact.  
  
“Common here, actually,” Helion went on, “My court purchases more Dawn incendiaries than anywhere else.”  
  
Nesta sketched her glance back out the window, to the blossoming orchards and expanse of lush green hills beyond. She’d seen the color that bloomed in sparks to the sky, heard the dancing feet under ancient trees. “For celebrations?”  
  
Helion _grinned_. “Because they explode.” He sprang to his feet in one sinuous motion, and held out a hand. “Because it feels good. I think you might understand the appeal.”  
 _  
Because it feels good_ \- because the citizens of Day valued nothing higher than good lives lived in comfort, to seek tranquility or pleasure as matched their needs a holy duty.  
  
Free of the usual jewelry, Helion’s palm gleamed with inner luminescence, like the sun itself lived beneath his night dark skin.  
  
Nesta hadn’t touched another being months. Hadn’t wanted too. Like she’d scraped off her own skin to claw free of the North, everything left over was raw.  
  
Helion just waited. His absurdly beautiful grin was the real smile that she’d seen him break into at mold-shedding ancient tomes, or herself, knocking down walls with her bare hands.  
  
Like a specter, the sound the sword had made hitting the waves echoed through her head again.   
  
She hoped the salt ate the steel. Nesta wanted the siphons to be carried out so deep the pressure would crush them. _Honor_ \- a year and a life too late. What use did she have for honor, now that he was free of the commanded burden of her and doubtless back to chasing Morrigan’s skirts?

What had _honor_ ever done?  
  
Nesta rose, and took Hellion’s hand.  
  
“ _Fine_ ,” She sniffed, some buried part of her trying to cringe at the ash smearing his immaculate grip. “Let’s light things on fire.”  
  
Outside, twilight was just beginning to gather across the green land, long blue shadows interrupting the last glow of gold light.   
  
Nesta stepped obligingly into the field that Helion had quietly pointed out was for one, his and empty of other living beings and two, something he could grow back without a thought. Waited through three rounds of vivid, impossibly bright Dawn Court fireworks.  
  
The day’s sudden end told her she’d lost more time than Nesta had imagined, staring at the seething teal sea.  
  
Gratifying explosion, the warm boom of Hellion’s laugh, almost louder than the crash of waves in her head.  
  
She just kept waiting for the _rage_ to cease. Summoned with the Libraries help what human’s used to throw flame- _she’d learned from riots against her father how destructive rudimentary tools could be_ \- and had the gracious experience of handing a High Lord of Prythian an incendiary glass bottle stuffed with a burning rag.   
  
The field of wheat was blazing, half a rainbowed brush fire from the last of fireworks, and still the feeling _pressed._   
  
And Nesta found herself speaking, world burning around her. “I threw the most valued sword in Illyrian history into the Summer sea today."  
  
The only sign of the heat around them was sweat that gleamed gold on Helion’s bare skin, flame reflected. He passed what had once been a fine perfume bottle into her grip, lit from his touch, and waited for Nesta to smash it, smile blooming at the sight, before speaking.  
  
“I’ve never heard of an Illyrian surrendering their blade.”  
  
Nesta bypassed the Lord entirely and threw her next trajectory hard enough the flames frothed like a falling star.   
  
“Their blades are an extension of themselves,” She hissed, furiously, “A manifestation of their honor. Their hearts held outside their great hulking _wretched_ bodies.”  
  
Helion tilted his head, smile stilled into a hard expression. “That seems unusually…romantic."  
  
Nesta laughed without amusement. “Oh, it is. Who needs words when you can bathe in blood? Why should anyone say _anything_ when you can just send giant swords to one another? Who could possibly need a thing but punishing _honor_?”  
  
Quicksilver, Helion twisted to meet her gaze. Beautiful the way fine high art might be- not for her to touch, or even the sort of beautiful Nesta might truly long for. It hadn’t missed her attention that the more she dismissed his charm, the more he sought her out.  
  
Not for a challenge- their was no hunger to Helion. None of the ambient ravenousness or slow seep of pure aggression that tinged the air around other High Lord’s she’d met. Glorious and golden, powerful and ancient; he was perhaps as wholly alone of Nesta was.  
  
“It was an apology,” Nesta concluded, flames so hot they’d created a phantom wind.  
  
“Not one you want to accept,” Helion muttered back, palms uplifted to the hungry flames that had found more fireworks, purple and pink sparkles hissing through the air like a celestial menace. “Did we not already light those?”  
  
Nesta smothered the flame with her hand, pulled out the cloth wick, and drank a bit of her most recently manifested handheld bomb. Decided all at once, tongue sharp and heart pounding to ignore the way they were both carefully talking. 

“Would you?”  
  
Helion stole the bottle from her grasp, and managed a single drink before spluttering. “ _Oh mourning gods._ No, I wouldn’t. Two years later?” Helion, was, Nesta had always known, an extremely adept observer.   
  
She didn’t need to provide the details, and he wouldn’t ask. 

“We might be immortal, but that doesn’t mean we don’t experience time.” He took another sip and grimaced. “What is this?”  
  
Nesta flicked her hair out of her face, braid unwinding in the heat. “Some kind of distilled corn?”  
  
Helion’s full mouth twisted, but he gamely nodded, and took another sip. 

“Did you winnow right past the new border sentry brigade?”  
  
Plucking at her pants like a skirt, Nesta inclined her head at an angle. The exact facsimile of a courtly courtesy demanded in other Courts. And then she threw another bottle.  
  
Helion’s laugh brought a smile, unexpected, to her face.   
  
It was a very short list of people who’d laugh with Nesta. Elain, unreachable and recovering. Lucien, virtually a stranger. The Spellcleaver, the High Lord of Day, who asked nothing of Nesta and demanded no gestures of rule.  
  
The purple had burnt out, leaving a bleeding sky pink taint to the very natural flames that surrounded them. 

“It’s unlike Tarquin to care for borders,” Helion mused, “The Summer Court bounds haven’t expanded or lost in thousands of years, and Adriata has rebuilt.”  
  
The sea of Summer was precise shade of turquoise as its High Lord’s eyes. Sparkling warmth, but like any ocean, the tide still commanded it. Nesta had thought she’d arrived in morning, but all the sudden here, it was night. She’d listened to the splash as it echoed and echoed in her head for hours. Lost time and place.

“Rhysand sent my sister on a mission of seduction before the War,” Nesta answered, fully aware scorn had overtaken her smile. “She stole an ancestral treasure."  
  
“The Book of Breathings was in the _Summer Court?_ ” Helion shook his head, “Its melting was a _crime_. Truly, was it written in the language of another world?”  
  
“Leshon Hakodesh, the tongue of gods.”  
  
Helion twisted idle ribbons of flames from the fire, knot work and banners, inferno flowers. “Charm offensive is one thing, but going after Tarquin is a low blow I don’t think another High Lord would have risked.”  
  
At her raised brows, Helion went on. 

“He’s _young.”_ And then, in answer Nesta’s scowl, _“_ You were transformed as an adult, actual years have little meaning. Tarquin would be the youngest Lord in history if Kallias hadn’t taken Winter at the same time. And Kal had a mate and living family to help him.” _  
_  
Nesta groped for the name she barely had a face for, more the impression of silver hair paired with seething hatred. “Does he not rely on Cresseida?”  
  
The blooms of flame ate another portion of the field, all at once. “No,” Helion admitted, clipped. “Many hoped the power would find her, but it didn’t. And I believe the Princess of Adriata was similarly _compromised._ ”  
 _  
Compromised-_ fucking Rhysand. The Court of Dreams who believed in honor, ruled for a better world. What an utter joke.   
  
“Rhysand was also part of the, _invading party_ ,” Nesta agreed, mulling his words with more moonshine. “What do you mean, the power would find her?”  
  
Helion was gently shooing away the moths who’d gathered to light as the sun set, neon filaments in their otherwise transparent wings every color imaginable.   
  
“Sometimes the lordship moves laterally through Houses. Cresseida is a second cousin, I believe? Barely survived the purge of their family. I would have guessed her heir myself.”  
  
Wings wider than her hand, a particularly brave moth found purchase on Nesta’s arm. It remained, even as she flared one hand in frustration. “ _No_ , I mean, she could have been High Lady?”  
  
Gold eyes a dangerous glint in the bonfire night, Helion very suddenly understood her question. “Were you told _otherwise?_ ”  
  
The fire rose in height, everywhere was gold, everywhere was red.   
  
“Tamlin told my sister there was never such a thing,” Nesta hissed, “Rhysand raised her up as the only High Lady in history, according to his promises.”  
  
Helion, whose moonshine consumption had continued to steadily rise, actually snorted. Somehow, coming from him, even that sound was beautiful, but loud enough the moths finally scattered. 

“Rhys has always been _goddamn dramatic._ ” He shook his head, “Tamlin might truly just not know- he took Spring with pure, dumb luck, I doubt he could explain the history of his own family, much less Prythian.”  
  
Nesta met those gold eyes, brighter than the rising sparks.  
  
“I inherited Day from my grandmothers,” Helion went on, steady gaze an easily read meaning. _Day does not brook with such false values. “_ We might be civilized now, but High fae are a predatory species.”  
  
A laugh, real, startled from Nesta. “Women are more dangerous?”  
  
“Significantly.” Helion swept a hand to the fire coalescing like a sea around them. “Amarantha culled every bloodline in the land, but she didn’t bother killing a single High Lord until open rebellion was attempted.”  
  
Heat that had nothing to do with fire rose to Nesta’s skin. 

_You are a queen_ , she’d heard again and again. _A ruler without a throne._ She’d never believed it. _Treasure, hero, monster.  
_  
Rhysand had called himself Death Incarnate- but Nesta was _Death._ Perhaps one day she’d come for the whole horrible North.   
  
The fire crept closer, flames higher, punching to the stars.  
  
Hungry red, verging on white near their feet. Nesta turned back to Helion to find him watching her with an expression her brain distantly, _confoundingly,_ identified as pride. At her expression, he only shook his head again, enormous grin splitting his face.   
  
“I’m not doing it.”  
  
Nesta froze in place, and then very slowly, raised her hand.   
  
The flames jumped skyward.  
  
Helion’s laugh boomed before the forceful abbreviation of, “Nesta, _what are you”-  
_   
She’d made a fist, white knuckles pointed at the sky. Like a thread being wound, flame both natural and magic detached from the earth and spun back to her, disappearing beneath skin. She reeled in the force of a fire that had eaten acres and left behind all at once, nothing but silently smoking dark.  
  
Helion’s face transformed to wonder.  
  
“Rhysand is a goddamned fool.” He said very quietly, before hovering a hand toward her, “Would you like to do the honors?”  
  
Nesta, chest rising and falling, said nothing.  
  
He accepted it with grace, doubtless able to scent her confusion and too polite to mention it. Wheat sprung from the earth, green to gold. As though they couldn’t help it, tiny flowers that hadn’t been there before blossomed at Helion’s feet, white pink as dawn.   
  
In a voice she hated, raw as her mortal throat would have been from the smoke inhalation, Nesta said, “My power is death. Destruction.”  
  
Very gently, _very slowly_ , the motion telegraphed with his entire body, Helion touched her arm.“If you can do one, you can do the opposite. You’re Cauldron born, no Court or shape binds you, Nesta Archeron.”  
  
Many companionable hours later Nesta was back in her tower, wide awake, still thinking _Cauldron born_.  
  
Her racing mind decried the very shape of the phrase. She’d died- she’d become unkillable- her body had ceased to be the one that had carried her from birth- she’d become a monster- she’d become immortal- _  
_  
When everything was stripped away, Nesta knew this. She’d been a woman with feelings so big they’d throttled her mortal lungs, bent and bruised her around the edges of her expected life. She’d seethed, she’d died, she’d been reborn in a body whose immortal strength could tolerate the force of what its bones caged.  
  
Her faery body wanted to live more than her mind had cared for.  
  
How could Death die?

She hadn’t sought it outright. 

What mattered, was that everything had hurt human.   
  
Childhood raised to be the first flower of her house, until it became clear Nesta couldn’t make herself small enough to fit the window box where women were allowed to bloom. Elain, who’d looked the shape and lived like an accomplished liar, but been too different in the end. Feyre, the last hope of their mother, who even on her deathbed begged her elder two daughters to do anything to protect their sister.  
  
Feyre, who had all their mother’s soft beauty and sunshine eyes. Feyre, their father’s beloved, free of the dark history of broken betrothals and what had once been the planned future of their centuries old House.  
  
Feyre who’d been reborn a child of every Court, who would always belong.  
  
Elain a seer, as she said, because she’d always been one. Time was a circle and ocean, and the Cauldron gave Elain what it had always given Elain, a blessed curse.  
  
But Nesta, who’d fought every step, whose last mortal gesture had been a death promise-  
  
Nesta, even in her blackest dreams, couldn’t fully remember what happened when she’d ripped out the Cauldron’s throat with her teeth.  
It had been perpetual.

It had taken all of three minutes, her heart stopped in twenty seconds, quicker than it took to drown.  
  
She’d torn out its throat and sealed her death with dark blood, drunk down eternity like it was her choice and she’d take it.   
  
Nesta had heard the Book of Breathings speak of the Archerons, felt the gaze of the Weaver of the Wood and done nothing but incline her head in turn. Breathed in the monstrous kinship the presence of the Bone Carver bestowed upon her with sick relief.  
  
The Archeron sisters had been mortal and become more.  
  
Nesta- who’d never smiled sweetly enough, who’d never been quiet enough, who’d never be _nicer, demure, apologetic_ \- had in her rage, gone one step further.  
  
The benevolent Lady of Night truly thought she was a _drunkard.  
_   
Trapped in a human life without choice hurt. To be fae was both agony and endless cessation of pain, and it had driven Nesta half mad.  
  
It hurt and hurt and hurt- the grating sound of Morrigan’s laugh, her hand dropped like a lead weight, the way only Nesta seemed to notice Rhysand looked at her and Elain like a predator gazing at food too small to bother hunting, the phantom pull of wings at her back, the full body feel of _war_ she couldn’t divorce herself from- it was agony, until she woke after the last battle still reeking of blood, alone but for Elain and Lucien.  
  
And then Nesta hadn’t felt anything at all.   
  
Nesta drank because sometimes when the world spun around her she nearly felt a chaotic joy that might have the fallen ancestor of flying. She’d drunk because the first thing she was offered in the company of her sister’s court was always liquor, as though it’s potency would deaden her tongue.  
  
Not that Nesta wanted to speak to them, any more than they wanted her there.  
  
It quickly became dull. Shocking later, but numbly accepted then, even with time spinning unsteady around Nesta- sleeping days, waking nights, hours stretched long or disappearing all at once- her brain was _hungry.  
_  
She could never stay drunk for long enough.  
  
And then came Rhysand.  
  
Eyes that hated her, purple shockingly alien even then. A smirk that said _this was all a joke, this is not for you,_ offering jobs and promotions for places in his Court hierarchy Nesta hadn’t even known existed. _  
_  
She could have said yes. Nesta could have spent the next thousand years becoming indispensable.  
  
But why should she?   
  
Nesta had already lost everything to the cause this man championed. And still, he hated her, clear in his scent, in every breath he breathed. Why should she _serve_? Why should Nesta Archeron bend toward an eternity, never be valued?  
  
Loyal, fathomless Amren tried to shift the situation.   
  
Nesta had been blackmailed into attending what Feyre insisted on calling _family dinner._ It was nearly the lie _Court of Dreams_ was _,_ and Nesta said as much to Lucien, seated in between her and Elain by Feyre’s hand. Down the table, Azriel had very suddenly felt the need to hide his face behind a wineglass.  
  
Lucien’s smile had fangs, and grew when Nesta continued, _does Feyre really separate you at every gathering?  
_  
Lucien had sighed, _technically, she doesn’t know. That would require paying attention.  
_  
But Nesta hadn’t heard anything over the rushing in her ears, been busying resolutely facing ahead, as the Morrigan and the General entered, arm in golden arm. Feyre cooed over Morrigan’s spangled whisper of a gown, received in return a hushed, _Cassian wasn’t even going to come, I pulled him out of bed,_ in explanation for lateness. 

And then everything went to shit.  
  
One part war reparation, one part saving grace, Amren’s plan for the Court was succinct.  
  
The maneuvering that made the Night Court army possible also had revealed that Rhysand’s hold on the Court of Nightmares was flawed. _Of course it was_ , Nesta thought, if Rhys refused to rule beyond occasionally showing up to threaten proud, ancient, wicked people into bowing.   
  
The Morrigan, for her part, had reigned over her bloodline from outside it for more than five hundred years. A job she would barely speak of, considering Rhysand had freed the very worst of those faeries into the place she took refuge from them.  
  
While Rhysand had been threatening and Feyre playing Queen dressed in cobwebs, Amren had taken Nesta to the very heart of the mountain. The Hewn City had been carved by the hand of a god, they said. Nesta recognized his touch. Beauty that was madness, madness that was true- every cave black, luscious inch had keened with familiarity to Nesta’s harsh senses.  
  
Not Rhysand’s darkness. Not Night. Eternal dark.  
  
That the people were cruel horrors was a separate thing altogether.  
  
Amren’s plan was straightforward. Morrigan could rest, focus on protecting Velaris- here Rhysand had sighed _, it is protected, they’ll be driven out_ , with a stupidity that nearly broke the frozen surface of Nesta’s mask. 

Driven out? Rhysand had put the fault on merchants and shopkeepers, the very vulnerable populace to deny business they doubtless needed. _Driven out?_ the High Houses of the Hewn City were monsters who also possessed enormous wealth, coin not their only lever to get what they desired.  
  
Nesta would take the dark throne.  
  
Or at least, the first position kneeling before it. The ancient blackness sang to her like she was a Lord herself, who better to keep in line the wickedest of Night’s citizen’s than Death?  
  
Feyre had spluttered, almost a horrified laugh. It didn’t matter what she said, it all meant the same thing. _Nesta isn’t capable, Nesta won’t be safe, are you mad?  
_  
Amren, as she did enough Nesta suspected the ancient being who did love Feyre was still capable of tiring of her heart-bleeding naïveté, addressed only Rhys. _Close the mountain,_ she’d told him, _let it be changed, or face that there will be another civil war in a century.  
_   
Rhysand glowered, Feyre’s voice went high pitched.  
  
Nesta tuned out of the ensuing battle wherein no one asked her opinion, and discovered that sip for sip, she could match an Illyrian trying to drink himself into silent unconsciousness without ill effect. _  
_  
High Fae might have been monstrous, but Illyrians were their match in physical strength.  
  
Nesta had never considered that the excess she pursued was _unusual._ She’d already passed from world-spinning back into clear eyed presence when the General of the Night Court tried to rise, and found he could not.  
  
The curiosity was almost a feeling, nearly close to the spark she felt watching him crash to the ground, before it too, melted away.  
  
Her life had been pain, glory, and then nothingness.  
  
So Nesta had gone looking for more. She wanted to know _what the hell she was,_ wanted- the pale echo of how her feelings had once burned- to know what she was capable of, to court disaster and pain because it was a _choice._   
  
Drinking proved futile. Fucking or fighting almost made her heart beat. Drugs- the volume and variety of which could barely be quantified- were as fleeting as wishes.  
  
Nothing, it had turned out, could hurt Nesta Archeron for long.  
  
The side effects dazzled her, chronicled carefully in her mind: sleep or euphoria, bleeding eyes, sparkling skin, colorful hallucinations. A human would have died, again and again. High fae would have collapsed in weakness, permanent damage left.  
  
There was nothing so strong it would shatter the ice that had crawled into her veins. No one who tried to stop the idle detachment between her ferocious body and unquiet mind.  
  
The Bone Carver had whispered to wind, _sister, you are a queen.  
_  
Elain, the last time Nesta had seen her, had fought her way out of the depths long enough to find her older sister and tell her, _Feyre is wrong. It’s not her business how you become who you’re going to be. It’s not her story anymore.  
_  
Nesta looked High Fae- but something else roamed beneath her skin, a body that would live and live and live. A faery, surely. A _perfect_ faery, truly immortal. Hadn’t Amren tried to tell her? Something else, something like her.  
  
It was Helion’s words that she couldn’t shake now. _If you can do one, you can do the opposite, no Court or shape binds you, Nesta Archeron.  
_   
In the hour before dawn, laying on the cool floor of her kitchen, Nesta held up a hand.   
  
The Library- eager friend, loving mother, child who she would kill to defend- flung into her grip a seed.  
  
Nesta could have lit it aflame. Ground it to dust. Sucked away that potential energy deep inside that she could feel.  
  
Instead, she swung upright, nightdress a pool of blue on the tile and whispered, “Live.”  
  
Barely a sound, she’d hardly dared breathe. But it was the voice of Nesta Archeron, and so, a command.   
  
Pale roots curled around her thumb, delicate leaves of first growth blooming from the hard shell. Nesta’s hand shook so hard she dropped it, an unexpected blessed as growth exponentially manifested: roots buckling stone to sink through the floor of her suddenly wider kitchen, branches bursting in a thick tangle, to climb that hollow center of the tower, impossible trunk reaching for the window that had grown in size at the very peak of the roof.  
  
She had to hold onto the counter, pull herself upright.  
  
Nesta craned her neck back and watched as first blooms and then fruit, appeared, red as rubies.  
  
She only started as unsteady feet to move on the second floor- Nesta winnowed in sheer instinct to the curve of her personal study, flowers and leaves and fruit bisecting the room.  
  
Her hands stilled, stone pale in the predawn light.  
  
Deft as a dream, Nesta pulled a pomegranate from the tree. Broke open its nearly split skin, and stained her mouth with ripe sweetness. Red as lifeblood, it was the best thing she could remember tasting in her whole wretched immortal life.  
  
Nesta laughed so hard tears grew in her eyes, and ate a dawn breakfast of magic. 

—  
Seven palatial seasons learning secrets and dispensing stories to those who needed it, long glorious spring and summer spent stealing perfectly ripe fruit from Helion’s breakfast table while telling him his import taxes needed restructuring, Nesta was forcefully reminded that other Courts still existed.  
  
She hadn’t admitted to her predawn adventure back to the Illyrian mountains. 

Pain that had roused her from slumber, a ribbon of heat that she could still feel beneath her ribs, _fury and blood_ on her hands again: _he’d laid down to die, he’d switched sides, she was going to kill him, she was going to kiss him for finally being brave enough to live life on his own terms- he was killing for his people’s right to live, he’d left Rhysand- he was alone-  
_   
It had been months, and if Helion knew, he was kind enough not to ask.  
  
But now- because Helion had asked her to be his second six times and Nesta had said _no_ and _never_ and eventually _provisionally_ \- they had a throne room full of stone fae reporting war to come.  
  
Some far-flung cousins of Illyrians- Nesta still sometimes saw them out of the corner of her eye and was mystified by the _lack_ of wings, the paler ring covered hands.   
  
Born for the ground like Illyrians for the sky: they grew gemstone from bare rock and spoke to the earth, lived in Day’s few mountains and made more beautiful things of metal and rock than any others alive.  
  
They were built like Illyrian’s- but they didn’t sound like them, _move_ like them, and Nesta held onto those precious differences with both hands.   
  
Their beautiful king stood before Nesta, metallic, jewel-bright eyes grave as his sandstone hewn jaw. Helion had risen from his throne to say hello, and lingered now looming over Nesta’s shoulder, like he wanted to be in reach for her reaction.  
  
“The Dreaming God,” Nesta repeated, proud, _annoyingly_ massive man before her nodding. “The god of your mountains who sleeps beneath the earth, is warning you?”  
  
Gold intertwined in the braids of his office chimed as Ysandr nodded again, face unchanged despite her doubt.  
  
“Our mountains are not their mountains,” He intoned, “But their hearts remember kinship.”  
  
The Stone Fae King was famously kind, for all that Nesta found him grave: it was a habit of his people, immovable and inviolable as the rock itself. She knew all about the Dreaming God. Not a death creature as those she’d already encountered. A different ilk than their horror bound in flesh and blood- she was _gold._   
  
Made of it, had lived as it maybe, but now slept like a statue upon her ornate berth, impossible face solid metal. Power bound to a cavern of flowers grown from rock in solid bursts of jewel, a shrine that gifted the children of her mountain prophetic dreams.  
  
Had told her king, _sister mountains rise, power shakes, dark will come.  
  
“_We understand, _”_ Helion said, deep voice matching the sincerity. _“_ In this time when old things wake, we appreciate the warning especially, brother.”  
  
They clasped forearms.   
  
But Nesta was still turning over the warning, thinking- “Do you believe the Illyrians could wake their gods, King of Rock and Cave?”  
  
He answered after a thoughtful pause, slowly twisting a ring of adamite on his forefinger. “If the mountains live, the gods do too. By our reckoning, Illyrian’s answer to the sky, but magic lives beneath the ground. If they remembered, if they gave blood or thanks, the power would remember them too.”  
  
Nesta thanked him too, and was left to toss herself into a chair under the too-canny eyes of her friend.  
  
Helion was _grinning_. “No point in making a bet, is there? Rhysand is going to be obliterated.”  
  
Nesta smiled back. “What _exactly_ is the Dreaming Gods historic accuracy?”  
  
With a thunk, grace as pure as a long-limbed hunting cats that stalked treetops of Day’s tropic south, Helion fell into the chair opposite. “She’s not _actively_ magical, you’re right. Half the things the King learns are about weather. But she warned us of the Cauldron’s immortality.”  
  
“The Cauldron broke,” Nesta said, sharply.  
  
Helion shrugged one elegant shoulder, gilded sunlight highlighting over his dark skin. She could already hear coming the perfectly casual infuriating tone that he used on courtiers and that never failed to raise her ire and make her answer.  
  
“The vessel broke,” He corrected, lightly. “The Cauldron was not- _well understood_ , by those who wielded and touched it.”  
  
She matched his tone, her own razor edges carrying it differently. “Nuance to murderous malevolence?”  
  
He shook his head, gold eyes steady on her. “We have books, rituals that predate the last forging. It was not always a dark thing.”  
  
“Did you ever touch it? Feel it?”  
  
Nesta knew the answer. Of course he had- Helion didn’t bother saying it- he’d probably have stolen it away from Rhysand to study and learn if it hadn’t been so vital to the war, or heavily guarded.  
  
In a slightly different life, Nesta could imagine she might have helped him with the theft.  
  
“It might have been iron for some time, but only because someone with fire chose it. Forging is destruction and magic is only passed through sacrifice or blood. The Cauldron wasn’t evil. It was _alive_. A thing capable of thought and feeling, left broken alone in ice. Of course it went mad.”  
  
Against the wooden table between them, tremors rocked her fingertips hard enough to dent the surface.  
  
“It couldn’t be whole again, after centuries.”  
  
Helion dipped his head.  
The words seemed to float out of Nesta, like she’d known all along. “The vessel broke. But it didn’t matter- in blood, in death, the Cauldron was already something new. Someone had ripped the life from its throat already.”  
  
Slow, he was always precise with the way he touched anyone, but gentle and without pretense with Nesta in a way that ached some distant part of her- slowly, Helion reached across the table to take her hand.   
  
“You begin to see your own importance, Nesta Archeron.”  
  
She hissed at him in reply, sharp high fae teeth she still thought were _absurd_ bared, but she squeezed his hand in return.  
  
“ _So_ ,” Nesta dragged out, leaning back in her chair, “The Illyrian’s really might have managed to wake their gods.”  
  
Helion met her gaze, a clarity of understand that perked up the corners of his mouth and set those famed gold eyes laughed at her. Nesta’s tone had hid _nothing_. The Illyrian’s deserved a chance to exist out from under the yoke of the High Lords of Night- and on another, more personal stake: Nesta hoped Cassian thrashed Rhysand within an inch of his life, took his whole goddamned empire.   
  
The mountains harbored gods- the Bone Carver walked free, somewhere. Bryaxis had hidden in a sea cave, worshipped by mermaids and fearful human sailors alike.  
  
The consequences of Rhysands reckless choices were coming to pass, and Nesta and Helion were going to watch the world take new shape.  
  
As they passed government papers between them- Nesta was restructuring _all_ the export laws now, to Helion’s gleeful delight- the brave new world crashed right into the space before Day’s throne, in the harried-looking shape of Nesta’s sister and her family.   


***  
The first thing Nesta Archeron’s favorite sister had ever said to Helion was, “ _Oh,_ you are tall.”  
  
Followed by, with a particular dreamy resonance as she shook his hand like a human, huge dark eyes drifting to something Helion couldn’t see before honing back in on his ducked head with palpable delight. “You’re going to officiate my wedding. _Oh!_ Hello, Helion."

Elain looked nothing like Nesta- and yet, in the same way, her power filled the room with identical intensity.   
  
It had been eight months since Nesta’s arrival- four since she’d started eating again, two since she’d started regularly leaving the Library.   
  
“Should I plan for it?” Helion asked, with an easy smile. “Afraid I’m not quite dressed for official business.”  
  
Elain Archeron, ratcheting up the similarity, arced a brow, visibly swept eyes over his bare chest, and _laughed._ “Oh no, you’re perfect. I think there’ll be flowers in your hair.”  
  
Helion obliged, blooming roses from nothingness to stay in his close crop of tight curls.   
  
Elain took the arm he offered. She didn’t appear to feel the need to ask where they were going, or where Nesta was- it was simply _understood_. He got the distinct impression she could have just as easily been the one leading the way as she drifted beside him, cloud of pale curls bobbing with her liquid steps.   
  
What she did say was this: a scoff, utterly delicate and scathing. “ _Yellow_?”

Helion’s laugh announced their presence to Nesta before Elain could, sharp face snapping up at once.  
  
With a grace that had nothing to do with being High Lord and perhaps everything to do with growing to adulthood in a pack of female relations, Helion dropped Elain’s arm and had faded back into the hallway by the time Nesta had crashed into her younger sister.   
  
The hug looked so hard it would have hurt a lesser faery, Nestas porcelain arms like bands of iron.   
  
The last thing Helion heard from the end of the corridor- the Library accommodating to create a huge entry he could shut where none existed the moment before was this: Nesta choking out a sob, and Elain’s soft, musical voice saying her sisters name like benediction. 

Thirty-six hours later, with the perfect timing of a psychic, Elain had Archeron found Helion in the subterranean hall where he met with advisors.  
  
A perfect bobbed head, no curtsey from this Archeron who laughed as Helion kissed her knuckles. “I hope you’ve enjoy your stay.”  
  
Helion had kept his distance, but he’d already heard word. The Librarian herself had graced the full moon dances and runs of his folk, worn a crown of flowers like the Day-born. The Pale Seer of the North had danced with sprites and lit lamps with phoukas, been received by the Stone fae and come back with pearls in her hair.  
  
Nesta had smiled and spent the evening beneath the trees. Not dancing, but the ground had bloomed for her. Daycourt soil pleased its arcane sister had protection once more.  
  
Elain had hummed in agreement and reached a lightening swift hand up to tap his jaw. “You have a very familiar face, Spellcleaver.”  
  
The airy voice of a woman looking to beyond. Helion smiled amiably in answer, waited for her eyes to refocus.

“I will return again soon,” She’d promised.  
 _  
Soon_ \- Helion had failed to imagine that meant six months later, a defecting Shadowsinger and Sorcha’s youngest in tow, looking like they’d arrived from a firefight.   
  
But he’d been raised by a High Lady and knew how seer’s worked, so naturally the first thing he did was dip his head in greeting at Elain Archeron, and ask, “Do I need the flowers yet?”  
  
Nesta slammed the sheath of paper in her hand directly into his chest and hurried forward. “ _Elain?_ ”  
  
He was glad for the distraction. Lucien Vanserra looked as much like Sorcha as people had always said, a knife to the heart standing tall and strong, bleeding arm slung up around Azriel’s shoulder with careless, telling intimacy, sooty fingertips touching one wingbone.   
_  
He’s happy,_ he’d tell her later, _he’s in love_.

“No flowers yet,” Elain chimed, accepting the fierce grip of her sister’s hug with equal strength. “But we’re not exactly welcome in the North right now.”  
  
Lucien bared a bloody smile, grinning at Nesta’s doubtless scowl over Elain’s shoulder.  
 _  
He’s fearless,_ Helion would have told his mate, if the Shadowsinger and Sorcha’s son hadn’t stepped forward out of the marble hall and into the Day throne room of old, and the world burst into light.  
 _  
Sunlight. Daylight. Fire._  
  
A rainbow of power and heat, a chime that clanged through the air and sang back _golden, golden, chosen, chosen.  
_   
_He’s mine?_ Helion would growl instead, tears in his eyes that stung as they fell. _  
_  
Like it had the day Helion was born, like his mother’s mother, like his great-great grandfather before her- the heart of Day was the sun, and so the heir shone.  
  
Lucien Vanserra was standing in a perfect corona of golden light, his lover thrown backward, his mate right on the edge of the glow _snarling_. It lifted his bloody red hair, threw into stark relief his body.   
  
Beautiful like his mother- _tall_ \- tall like his father.  
  
Nesta was looking at Helion. He couldn’t- _he couldn’t_ \- he shook his head, a white roar all that remained, and Nesta spoke the words for him. The prayer. It should have been his the day his child was born- Helion’s words if he ever got lucky enough, a future that had been impossible and fraught with danger.  
  
“So the sun sets to rise, so Day must follow Day. The sun will rise.”  
  
Three hundred? _Four hundred?_ Years too late. All Helion could do was stare, world see-seesawing beneath his feet.  
  
Lucien had extended a hand, splayed fingertips into what Helion knew felt like a warm river, light itself pouring from his skin. And then he dropped it. 

“ _What the fuck?_ ” Were the first words Helion Lucien say. “Nesta, what the hell are you saying?”

Helion’s eyes fell shut. _A very familiar face_ -a sense, not a knowing, not a prediction, _gods grind him to dust and damn him.  
_  
“If you ask it, it’ll stop,” Helion managed to say, without looking. At the face of man whose tortures were legendary: _Beron’s lost heir, banished son, lethal diplomat, hated child._ He had Helion’s eyes.  
  
Helion’s mother’s eyes.  
  
He was going to be _sick.  
_   
A voice like smoke and spice murmured, _hold on hold on hold on, love. Keep him, there. Love, I’m coming.  
_  
Helion ignored it, found himself speaking without any sensible plan: what the hell could he say? 

“I didn’t know.” He looked up, met the bewildered and _instantly_ weary gaze of the man who was apparently his son. “Daystone was sung into existence by the first Lady. It recognizes every heir, it-“ He was choking, what he distantly recognized as Nesta’s cool, iron grip grabbing his hand- _“I didn’t know_.”

“You didn’t know, _”_ Lucien repeated, slowly. He’d turned to look at Azriel, the shadowsinger mouthing something that made his golden gaze ripple and burn. “You didn’t _know.”  
_   
Nesta was holding his hand so tightly it hurt. He was unspeakably grateful for it- a tie that was the only reason he managed not to flinch as the bond is his chest flared to bonfire height and Lucien made a low noise like he’d been punched.  
 _  
“Mother.”  
_  
Trailing red ribbon, pale and glorious, Sorcha was every Autumn moon and beloved dawn- the woman he’d steadfastly loved for more than five centuries.  
  
She was _smiling._  
  
“I knew the time had come,” Sorcha said simply, and Helion had to close his eyes again, Nesta’s free hand flying up to grip him under the elbow. “A convergence of centuries. My son- my love- my dearest ones, I have waited years upon years for this time when I could see you meeting without death.”  
  
Blind, the bond told him the rest: Sorcha floating across the room to embrace Lucien. Lucien hugging her automatically, freezing in place as she kissed his cheek and whispered: _it was always my dearest hope and greatest wish you’d know your father- I have waited and waited until it was safe- my son, my star- your are Day and you are Autumn and you are ours.  
_  
Helion looked up in time for Lucien to meet his gaze, for one agonized, panicked second- and then Lucien was gone, winnowed away, color drained from a face not nearly so pale as his mothers.  
— _  
_Azriel found Lucien outside, another pillar on a flowered portico, blooms spilling into a view of near unbounded prosperity.

Lucien had one sun brown hand spread over his eyes, every long, lean, inch of his body limned with a tension all the more dangerous for his absolute stillness. Azriel didn’t need shadowsong to know the transition to lethal grace would be seamless.  
  
Pulling off a siphon gauntlet with his teeth, Azriel wrapped one bare hand around his wrist.  
  
High Fae could practically stop breathing when they wanted to; in rage or pain or shock, a display of the arcane strength of their bodies. Statues had more life. But Azriel had waited sixteen years hearing the wind to see the sky. Twice that, a hundred times that- nothing, if it would help Lucien.   
  
Air off the rolling green hills brought the scent of growth, dewy and vital in the slow golden sunset light. The Day Court radiated a warm peace, not even the shadows could find darkness.  
  
Helion’s- _Lucien’s father’s_ \- benefaction.  
  
With a small, undeniably wounded noise that called upon the most Illyrian parts of Azriel to _rip apart_ what had caused pain, Lucien finally tipped forward until his forehead met Azriel’s chest.  
  
“I’m going to burn down the entire fucking Autumn Court.”  
  
He took the silent permission to wrap his free arm around Lucien’s waist, dip his head and tuck his whole body close around him as Azriel had longed to since that first gasp of pained breath.   
  
“I can get you over the border,” Azriel murmured, lips to Lucien’s brow. “They won’t sense us coming.”  
  
“They’ll sense when I tie Beron to that bone throne and _burn him alive_.”  
  
There was no doubt in Azriel’s mind Lucien was capable of it- out from under the harsh hold of Spring, he’d relearned the harvest moon wildness in his veins. Strong, uncontainable; the truth was, Lucien was _dangerous_ and Azriel savored every bit of that strength that left room for heart, from the gentle fire starters hands to the mouth that drew blood.   
  
Azriel would slit Berons fucking throat if Lucien asked.  
  
Shadow whispered it to the man in his arms. _Let me let me let me, there’s already blood on my hands. Fight beside me, let me do the killing, love.  
_  
Lucien let out the breath he’d been holding. “Can you say it aloud? I need-” He shook his head.   
  
“We could kill Beron any day,” Azriel whispered, running a hand down the curve of Lucien’s spine. “You grew up stronger than him. He won’t ever touch us.”  
  
The promise of an Illyrian was their bond and heart- Azriel had the extra, ironclad surety of a seers word on his side.   
  
“Do you know,” Lucien said, “The first time he tried to have me killed I was _two?_ ” He laughed, hollowly. “The court told the story for years- was just barely toddling around, but I’d managed to make plants grow up through the throne rooms marble floor. I made them _bloom._ ”  
  
“He knew you weren’t his.”  
  
It wasn’t a question. Under Azriel’s palm, the lean muscle of Lucien’s back turned iron once more. “He knew. My mother knew. My whole pack of fucking monster brothers probably knew. But no could prove it- everyone said he wanted me dead for power. _Like I was a rival at four years old.”  
_   
Azriel, who’d seen his own step-brothers dead by Cassian’s hand, who’d stopped caring over the centuries that he wore his cruel father’s black-eyed northern face, would have heard what wasn’t being said even without shadows grace.  
  
“But not even Beron told you.”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” Lucien hissed, raising his head. The seething fire of his natural eye was hauntingly familiar now that Azriel had seen him beside Helion. Liquid gold. 

“One last revenge. And I can’t even hate fucking Helion, because I’m pretty sure he’s in there crying on _Nesta goddamn Archeron’s shoulder-_ because Helion being Helion who’s jokingly tried to tempt you _into his bed_ for centuries isn’t enough, my- _my father_ \- is shacked up with Elain’s older sister, _who is a Death goddess,_ which Feyre will probably take so personally she’ll start another _stupid fucking war_ to drag her back. And Rhysand will help her, just in time for Cassian to lose his mind and blow up the kingdom I’m apparently, _surprise_ , going to be _fucking High Lord of._ "  
  
Mildly, Azriel murmured, “I thought we liked Nesta.”  
  
And just like he’d hoped, Lucien laughed.  
  
The crack of mirth finally unwound him enough to slump in Azriel’s embrace, the full weight of his body an easy burden.   
  
“Do you want to leave?”  
  
Elain would never mind, Nesta was actually much harder to offend than anyone seemed to realize- and Helion, _gutted_ , molten-eyed Helion, would probably give Lucien one of his own lungs right now if his newly discovered son asked for it.  
  
A flock of rainbow sunbirds passed overhead, crystalline wings chiming as they flew to evening roost. The cheerful noise of their journey had barely faded when Lucien murmured a dissent.  
  
“You want me to take Beron out of the equation?”  
  
Lucien pulled back just enough to meet Azriel’s gaze with slitted golden eyes. “You take Beron, I’ll get Eris and Oberon?” And then he laughed again, because neither of them was joking at all. “I want to know _why._ ”  
  
With one scarred finger, Azriel tilted Lucien’s chin higher. “So we ask why.”  
  
The room they walked back into was stranger than the one they’d left. Helion had buried his wild, horrified expression in his hands and apparently sat down right where he’d been standing. Beside him, a hand on his shoulder, stood Nesta, her head cocked at their arrival but gaze elsewhere.  
  
She was watching Sorcha Vanserra.  
  
Lucien’s mother stood in the middle of the room, eyes closed, one hand serenely outstretched. Fingertip to pale fingertip, Elain was her mirror. There was no magic in the gesture- two woman touching hands- but it was difficult to look at.  
  
Light itself seemed to warp, a mirage around their figures.   
  
At the clattered sound of Lucien coming to an abrupt stop, Nesta’s head snapped up. Face unchanging, she painstakingly bent her wrist and swept her fingers, the Illyrian ambush party hand sign for _information wrong,_ followed by a warning twist: _foreign magic.  
_   
Azriel blinked, and _listened_. Had to the distinct, instant thought of _fuck_ , and understood what he was looking at.   
  
An exchange. The fathomless depths of Elain’s future bounds, the sharper, less detailed future as it lay between resolute ties of thread in Sorcha’s mind.  
 _  
Two_ seers of their Age.   
  
“Interesting,” Elain said, airy like atomized poison, “That you see only absolutes.”  
  
Owl-bright, golden brown eyes flicked open. “The red string is a guide. You understand?”  
  
Elain squeezed the older woman’s hand before stepping back, “I do see. Suffering, blood. The day Beron dies aught to be a holiday and you have my every sympathy.” She fell in line, last step taking her to Lucien’s other side. “But you must pardon that I won’t explain it for you.”  
  
The replying incline of Sorcha’s head sent chiming bone hanging from the inverted back of her Autumn crown, white osseous and living fireflies tangled in the smooth river of her red hair.  
That these three people had somehow never all been in the same vicinity in four centuries _had_ to be the work of Sorcha. Lucien did not just _vaguely_ resemble them both: he unmistakably carried his father’s features and the Vanserra lines grace.   
  
Azriel held tight to Lucien’s hand, and tried not to think: that’s _Helion’s_ mouth. Sorcha’s nose. His father’s broad shoulders and Day-darkened skin, his mother’s bloody hair and gilded freckles.  
  
Lucien was _Lucien_ \- the first flame that was bright enough to cut through the dark in Azriel’s whole damned life. What claim of a Court could change him? None.  
  
But there was no world in which Beron could ever have not known.   
  
Helion’s bloodshot eyes, revealed as Nesta jabbed him in the wrist, appeared to be tracking the same thing, gaze flying between his adult, newly met son and his mate. Seeing what Azriel saw- thinking, perhaps, every damning thing Lucien had just pointed out, at a volume the High Lord had doubtless been able to hear.  
  
Helion rose to his full height and reached for Sorcha.  
  
A mimicry of the way Elain moved- a doubling of the tension Azriel could feel radiating off Lucien- Sorcha neatly stepped backward to catch his hand at the exact right moment.   
  
It was like they’d all ceased to exist. There might as well have been no one in the room but the High Lord of Day and the Lady of Autumn, one pale palm tucked tenderly between his massive hands.  
  
The shadows crooned. _Love, love, love, hurting aching eternal gentle ceaseless love.  
  
“Tell me,” _Helion said, in a voice that could have scorched the sun, “This was the only way.”  
  
The moon of her apple-cheeked face rose, and with synchronicity that had nothing to do with foresight and everything to do with an even wilder, stronger magic, Helion’s forehead met hers.

Lucien’s breathe caught, loud in Azriel’s ears.  
  
By silent agreement between the raised brows of the two eldest Archerons, Nesta spun on her heel to leave. Elain, a step behind her, pulled on Lucien’s arm until he unfroze enough to follow, dropping Azriel’s hand to grope higher and lock a faintly trembling grip on his biceps.  
 _  
Stay,_ the shadows whispered for him. _By my side in my mind, stay, stay, stay stay, Heir, Heir, I can’t-  
_   
Back outside, the setting sun had filled the sky with bruising purple and blushing pink. Azriel caught the hand Elain dropped and brought it to his lips, waiting for Lucien to begin breathing again as they watched the Archeron’s decide where they were going- confused affection and longing all across his pained, beautiful face.   
  
“They won’t fit through your front door,” Elain said, airy, in response to Nesta’s steps ringing on the stone, leaving them behind her.  
  
She shrugged.  
  
“326 has a glass terrace and accommodations.” A door, shining silver as a mirror, appeared before her. “If you don’t mind staying inside library walls,” Nesta’s gaze swung back to Lucien and Azriel. “We could return to the palace, but”-  
  
“But all the daystone will go bloody mad again and shout to the whole world Helion has a bastard heir?”  
  
Nesta’s chin rose, but her voice was as gentle as it was unyielding. “Day recognizes all children, you are no more a bastard than I am _shacking up_ with Helion.” She made a face. “You are the family he has _always_ dreamed of.”  
  
And with that, she walked through the silver.  
  
Elain skipped after her, leaving Lucien and Azriel alone in the sunset light.   
  
“We really can leave,” Azriel murmured, voice low. Lucien’s hand flexed on his arm without any clear conscious meaning. “Helion is only family if you want him to be.”  
  
Lucien shook his head. “Maybe I do. I don’t- I _don’t_ know. But I don’t want to leave yet.” _I just want you beside me, no matter what,_ shadow plucked from Lucien’s willing heart.  
  
That nothing, _nothing,_ could make Azriel leave didn’t need to be said.   
  
“It helps,” Lucien, sounding more like himself, “That Nesta is clearly _revolted_ by the idea of sleeping with him.” Azriel would have laughed, but the careful way Lucien was looking at him, despite the sly tone, held him still. “And… and I keep thinking. If it’s real, if it ever makes any sense- Az, look at this _place._ I’ve never felt the absence of bloodshed so keenly anywhere. Our kids would be safe here. Is that _insane_?”  
  
Children. The tiny, impossible hope Azriel had carried around for centuries. That somewhere, somehow, he’d see his own Illyrian eyes in a face that had never known violence or horror.  
  
The Court of Dreams had been a _dream_ \- but Azriel never once stopped thinking about a different world, a purpose to the things he’d done in the dark.   
  
Dawn Court alchemy could mix lineages where nature could not. Like bringing Feyre back from the dead, like binding the broken Cauldron- it just required _power._ A piece or two, given freely of whatever magic lived in a faeries soul.  
  
They had power to spare- it wasn’t a new conversation.   
  
Azriel stepped closer. “More than one?”  
 _  
It’s real,_ he let the shadows whisper. _The land sings beneath your feet, nothing will ever harm you here. You are loved and wanted, and if you never leave I won’t either.  
_   
The bare column of Lucien’s throat bobbed as he tilted his head back. “Beron dead, Autumn safe, a Lordship to protect them? I want three.”  
  
“Four,” Azriel purred, watched Lucien’s gaze brighten to burn. “No one left out.”  
 _  
“Six."_  
  
“ _Four,_ ” He repeated, “And I won’t let Cassian teach them to fly or Amren to get involved in their education.”  
  
Lucien laughed. “I think she’d have to fight Nesta for it. _The fucking library,_ you know, I didn’t think it was real when I was a child?”  
  
They stepped through the mirror together, hand in hand into the ancient kingdom Nesta Archeron had come to rule.  
  
Pink light assaulted them instantly from all sides. Unlike the dark catacombs of ancient texts where he’d found her before, Nesta had taken them to a room of glass. Perched high on a promontory of one of Day’s few mountains, it was hot as summer and gilded in the last rays of the setting sun.  
  
Lucien needed to speak to his mother- _meet_ for real, his father.There was war on the horizon and centuries worth of assets to smuggle out of Velaris. Blood from Rhysand’s broken nose on Luciens hand that Azriel still hadn’t gotten a clear answer about, _but_ -  
  
But the shadows sang _family safe home_ , and vanished. 

***

Nesta had never had cause to know Azriel or Lucien Vanserra well.  
  
What she did know she liked: Azriel’s unexpected kindness and Lucien’s clever, brutal words. The love they shared for each other that could take all the air out of a room, but never excluded Elain as _family_ , as important.  
  
She could trust them with her sister. That was good as kinship, now.  
  
Undeniably _, horribly,_ Nesta also knew how Illyrians worked. So she wasn’t surprised when Az disappeared after Elain to find sustenance, and Lucien strode right up to her and stole half her chaise.  
  
Wordless, Nesta pulled out the flask hidden behind the pillow-backing and passed it over.  
  
Lucien chugged, coughed, and tipped the whole thing down his throat. “So. You’re _definitely_ not fucking Helion, and I’m an ass for yelling about it.”  
  
Nesta sipped her own drink and fought off a smile.  
  
“I think, under the circumstances, you can be forgiven.” She paused to watch Lucien’s sharp eyes as the Library obliging refilled the flask, air awash with the discordant scents of whiskey and ink. “What the hell did Rhysand do that you all ran?”  
  
Lucien made a face. “If you’re a seer too, I’m going to need a lot more to drink.”  
  
On the other side of the glass walls, fields of wheat glowed one last time before falling into twilit darkness. Soon, pixies would paint the air, Day citizens sitting down to one more final meal, gathered as families.  
  
“The Library skipped right over guest quarters and enchanted to being a house, this morning.”  
  
One bedroom, and a separate outlying cottage with a wall of windows and a garden of poison flowers. Nesta could recognize her sister’s taste anywhere, had lived in Velaris long enough to recognize the ironwork on the balconies as place to sun wings in all seasons. 

Lucien swore.  
  
“We’ll need it. If you don’t mind?” He took another swig, before tucking the flask back precisely where’d she’d had it hidden. “That _fucking_ \- Rhysand, _the goddamn bastard,_ asked Az to assassinate”-  
  
He paused, remembering his audience.  
  
The word fell out of Nesta’s mouth like a sigh, distant echo of her heart beginning to hammer. The one person who was a danger to Rhysand’s rule, who Nesta knew like breathing Azriel would never harm.

“ _Cassian._ ” She met Lucien’s golden gaze in disbelief. “Rhysand asked his spymaster to kill his general _? His brothers._ He cannot be that stupid. _”  
_  
The bitter twist of Lucien’s mouth promised pain to the High Lord. “Az caught the thought. And Feyre was talking about trying to tempt battle predictions from Elain. We didn’t stay to find out if he was serious.”  
  
Nesta was saved from saying _of course he’s serious, the stupid worthless prick, he has no idea how to lead or make choices that don’t have the maximum cost, he’s forgotten life that isn’tconstant lies and bloodshed-_ by Elain dancing into the room, Azriel a foot behind her carrying an enormous tray of food.  
  
“The Library provides,” Elain sang.  
  
Nesta watched the weary fury on Lucien’s face flicker and die to softness, meeting Azriel’s eyes across the room. Love- _love_ that filled the air without choking her, that spooled out in every direction, welcome.   
  
She rose to her feet, and said, very quietly, over her shoulder. “ _Fuck Rhysand._ Stay as long as you want.”  
***

Cassian was fairly sure he was about to die.  
  
He’d given himself over to rebellion, and thought _I’ll a be sword._ One more arrow, one more strike, one more powerful Illyrian Rhys wouldn’t want to tangle with or harm.   
Instead, he’d been the spark that sent it all burning down.  
 _  
The Lord of Bloodshed-_ they whispered- _the most powerful Illyrian alive. Our general. Our Red flame of Glory- a bastard.  
_  
The cacophony grew _\- a bastard, a bastard, a bastard. Did our lords not earn their titles and learn their love of lineage from outsiders?  
  
Was an Illyrian even an Illyrian if he ground to dust people born for sky? Took the wind from half their kind- was even one Illyrian not stronger than any High Fae? Did they not all feel the thunder in their blood and the rage of their hearts?  
_  
Never again able to be overlooked, a network of women set to change their world. Cassian, who’d refused leadership of the rebellion at first, automatically, didn’t know how they’deven all known each other, much less how word could possibly be passed through every stronghold in their land.  
  
But he’d never be able to forget what they did.  
  
One beautiful green summer night, wildflowers blooming blue unavoidable under every step.  
  
In concert, that warm full moon, every high born Lord of Illyria died.  
  
Poisoned by servants they’d beaten and overlooked. Aided by wives trapped by their noble blood- wielding power they’d never been allowed to learn, killing might that lived in their veins they’d been told was meant only for their sons. Bastard warriors who’d been spit on by their superiors their entire lives, who hadn’t the benefit of growing up with a High Lord to save them, daughters who’d never fly again, priestesses who carried the long memory of their people in secret.  
  
Night Court authority died in the mountains in a single wave of violence.  
  
Cassian couldn’t have stopped it.  
  
Wasn’t sure, in the end, that he would have. Because with death came Illyrian elders, came priestesses and children, warriors and mothers, a hundred clans under the same banner.  
 _  
In our grandmother’s time, we still had a language,_ they cried. _Our grandfather’s grandfathers built cities of stone, wrote our stories in ink and skin.  
  
Once,_ they shouted, with all the rage of the merciless winter wind, _we were as many as raindrops in the storm.  
  
Once, we filled the sky.   
  
Once, our wings were the thousand colors of sunrise and our children grew without fear.  
_  
Cassian burned the bodies of a hundred High-fae invested Lords, and waged war.  
  
He’d broken enchantments he knew Rhysand himself had set on their borders. Stolen shipments of food headed for southern cities to feed his people. Slaughtered scouts and loyalists and faeries who might have once served under his own command. Watched, as elders made weak with a thousand years of strife raised old obsidian altars and fed the long forgotten gods of Illyria blood.  
  
Felt the wind sing, as that freely given blood traveled through the promise marks of stone, and lightening struck.   
  
But it would all end here: the far North that never thawed. Where the last of the Illyrian army, their priestesses and cohort, had put their back to the sea to face the army of the High Lord.  
  
Cassian had always thought Rhysand would come for him, eventually.   
  
That there was nothing- _nothing_ \- chosen family and brotherhood couldn’t fix. If only in the memory of the gentle Lady of Night who’d raised them. The sister they’d loved who’d lived in the sky more than any of them. The Illyrian blood in Rhysand’s veins.  
  
He’d been wrong.  
  
The massacre- Rhys couldn’t forgive it. Couldn’t leave it unpunished or without answer.   
  
And Cassian couldn’t _forget_ -  
  
The fact the Rhys loved flight and freedom, but had always, always belonged to something bigger. That he’d spent five hundred years talking about change, but never upset the balance that kept his sway over the north.   
  
Five hundred years spent with Rhys never hiding that he thought Illyrians were _barbarians_. Backwards and wild. Useful but dangerous. A people who didn’t need _help_ , so much as they needed saving from themselves.   
  
Cassian would die fulled-hearted with the knowledge they were more.  
  
They were the thunder that called lightening, the scythe of windsong, and the bleeding heart of the mountain. They were Illyrian, and they would never be owned again.  
  
Comfort was this: a silken grey ribbon, long discarded in a book. Cassian had found it in Velaris, forgotten at the House of Wind, Nesta’s scent clinging to its torn edges. He’d carried it beneath his armor on every suicide run and brash victory since she’d saved his life, more than a year ago. _  
_  
Wore it now, the black cloud of a thousand High Fae on the horizon, tied around his wrist in promise.  
  
Rhysand had called upon the Darkbringers, and they’d come.  
  
Cassian could see pale hair glinting across the valley, the whole corrupted bloodline of House Veritas and their retainers gathered for slaughter.   
  
Only the Morrigan was missing.  
  
At dawn Rhysand had reached out- not in writing, not in person- but straight into Cassian’s mind. _Cas, surrender. You don’t need to fight- we can broker a new treaty with the camps- you can come home. You’re my brother, I don’t want to fight you.  
_  
And all Cassian heard was _camps_.   
  
Another generation of Illyrian’s raised to fight. Women abandoned to servitude, men grown under the weight of violence in freezing mud and brutal hardship. An army at the ready- a people on the brink of extinction.  
 _  
Surrender, Cassian_ , entreated the unrelenting voice of a High Lord. _We can put down this rebellion together._

Rhysand had never understood. They weren’t _brothers_ \- Rhys was a High fae, High Lord who sometimes chose to wear wings. Cassian was an Illyrian, blooded and born of the open sky, he could be nothing else.   
  
To fight wasn’t a hardship. To die wasn’t a fear.

He’d broken his fidelity once in his life- he never would again. Honor was Cassian’s heart- it would live on, beating in Nesta Archeron's chest.   
  
Cassian slammed shut every door to his mind, raised every defense he’d been disciplined to learn.  
  
Two hours later, the bone drums from the Court of Nightmares began to beat.  
  
There was nothing left to do but prepare for battle.

Cassian smelled him before he saw the shadows. Warily drew both sword and knife- this too, he’d been waiting for- _he didn’t want this fight, he owed it his people to live so that a hundred boys like they’d been could grow up without bloody hands, he never, ever wanted to hurt Azriel-_

Who was waiting behind him, still as stone.

“Is that face _preparing to be asassinated_?” Lucien asked lightly, slumped leaning against Azriel’s side. He was tossing into the air and catching a small golden blade, the shine of it like a star in the morning light. More gold still- Day court gold, bright as the sun- chimed from his hair as he straightened, staring at Cassian with his steady mismatched eyes. “We’re not here to fight you.”

“Cassian,” was all Azriel said, and it was everything.  
  
He barely- _barely_ \- managed to sheathe the blades before he careened into Azriel. Cassian had been _alone_ , bathed in the blood of the fight, his family fractured.  
  
Azriel squeezed his shoulder, that deep voice right in Cassian’s ear. “Did you really think I came to kill you?”  
  
Cassian’s eyes stung. “Don’t tell me he never thought it.”  
  
The heavy shadow coiled about Azriel’s face as Cassian stepped back was all the non-answer he needed. Of course, Rhys had thought it. One death, for the good of his territory? A rebellion gutted before it could cost more lives?  
  
Rhysand would always make the hard choice.  
  
Bright head tilted in the direction of something Cassian couldn’t hear, Lucien caught the blade one last time and came to attention.   
  
“Don’t forget you have shit to live for,” This was resolutely directed at Cassian, a fierceness he wasn’t sure he’d earned. Cassian nodded, all the same.   
  
Lucien waited until his words were acknowledged to rock forward on the balls of his feet and pull Azriel down into a filthy kiss Cassian didn’t want to be within ten miles of, much less the same room for. “Be safe,” He growled, accent three times thicker than it had been the moment before.   
  
Azriel smiled with terrible tenderness, and kissed him on the forehead before Lucien winnowed away.  
  
“You really thought I wouldn’t come?”  
  
Cassian returned to strapping blades to his person, half to distract the frantic energy now pumping in his blood. He wasn’t _alone_.“You’ve always been the Night Court’s shadowsinger first, I’ve never blamed you.”  
  
Never could- Illyrians barely counted Azriel in their number. Too other, too different. Cassian knew the loyalty that lived in his heart was a different thing than Azriel’s ironclad honor, but never a bad thing.  
  
Azriel moved to stand beside him, gripping the edge of the map-scattered, paper strewn command table with both hands.   
  
“Rhys doesn’t believe in neutrality, it turns out. We took refuge elsewhere.” Cassian could hear what wasn’t being said- _I won’t fight against our people either. I won’t hurt you. I won’t be used. “_ I’ll be loyal to death, but not in this. _”_  
  
Gold braided in Luciens hair, new deep tan stark on Azriel’s face. “Helion doesn’t deserve you, but I hope he’s grateful.”  
  
Azriel knocked their shoulders together affectionately, wings rustling. “It’s a court built on peace. He pays well, considering there isn’t anything to do.”  
Outside a massive crackle went up- like a thousand bundles of kindling splitting in flame, blending to roar like Dawn Court alchemic flame. Power hazed within the wards around the rebel army, a breath held.  
  
“I realize Lucien is a _savage_ ,” Cassian meant it as a compliment, and Azriel knew it. Lucien was easily one of the most dangerous hand to hand High Fae fighters either of them had ever met, “But. _”  
  
“_He can hold his own. _”_ Azriel asserted, with a certain degree of smugness. As though in time, the ground rumbled beneath their feet. Once, twice, the tremors rattled the camp.  
  
“What is he _doing_?”  
  
Azriel grinned, and pulled Cassian outside. Perched high on a ridge he could only have gotten to with magical means, Lucien was ripping free great hunks of rock from mountain slope. They rose to meet him, teeming out of the earth like eager children.  
  
Cassian raised his brows in disbelief, as, air shimmering with heat that didn’t touch the ground, the rocks melted. Lava seethed, a red and wanting ocean of death, waiting Lucien’s command.  
  
“That is not _Autumn_ magic.”  
  
“He’s gotten in touch with other skills,” Azriel said, voice hungry. Cassian vaguely wondered if Lucien could feel the force of his lover’s gaze, even across the breadth of the army. It seemed likely. Az marshaled himself enough to say, “Really, it’s Elain you should be worried about.”  
  
Cassian had the soul deep, full body thought, _Nesta is going to kill us.  
_   
“Elain is _here?_ ” _  
_  
Azriel’s sharp smile was brighter than Cassian had seen in years. They were about to fight an army they’d once _led_ \- but still love, freedom from duty, the forceful disconnect from the Court that had once been their whole world, had given Az peace.   
  
“She snuck in last night.”  
  
Naturally. Because the Archeron’s got more dangerous and less predictable the further you went up the line.  
  
Cassian heaved an internal sigh. He’d face Rhys and die for his people with Nesta’s scent on his skin and her name on his lips, but he wouldn’t do it with her favorite sister in danger. “Go help Lucien see if Keir will melt, I’ll find her.”  
  
Azriel didn’t need to be told twice.  
  
Soldiers with brows smeared with blood and ashes streamed past Cassian as he made his way through the camp. He’d never been able to convince them to discard salutes entirely, but no Night Court bows were observed here. A fisted hand to the heart, the old Illyrian signal for respect, came from all sides.  
  
Elain was, in the end, shockingly easy to find.  
  
He should have just followed the blood.   
  
For one thing, in the cluster of white and grey robes that marked priestesses, Elain was hooded in red. Vermillion, the forbidden color of old Illyria. For another, she was standing serenely under the shade of the wings of the eldest clan matriarch in the mountains, daubing blood and blessings on their warriors as a team.  
  
“Be the thunder that breaks the sky,” That ancient voice intoned, in time with Elain’s anointment.  
  
The middle Archeron sister finished the blessing in her musical voice. “You’re going to take an arrow to the shoulder. Don’t pull it out, or you’ll lose motion in the arm. Your shield sister will have your back.”  
  
Cassian watched, smiling fighting onto his face, as the prediction was accepted.  
  
Unerring, Elain handed off the bowl of anointment paste to another priestess without looking, and stepped out of her place in the lineup to pull him into a hug.  
  
“Cassian!”  
  
Cassian bent at the waist so that she could grab his shoulders comfortably, mindful of the armor and weapons that covered his body. “Elain.”  
  
She smiled up at him before bobbing away to touch the arm of the warrior woman who’d just been blessed, heedless of her hair catching on a spiked pauldron over Cassian’s chest. “Your daughter lives. She’s across the camp, in a blue tent, sharpening her father’s sword.”  
  
The woman looked at her with wide eyes, and dove into the air.   
  
This Archeron sister, like both the others, could _absolutely_ take care of herself. Cassian had needed to see the safety with his own eyes, and she probably knew it.  
  
They were family- in some round about, adopted way- and that wouldn’t ever change.  
  
Cassian began gamely untangling her impossibly fine, buoyant curls, almost white against the armor. She didn’t notice until she’d bounced back to his side, fresh blood on her hands. “Did Mor ask you to call her Morrigan, last time you saw her?”  
  
He’d heard Azriel answer a hundred questions like it- Elain always knew her own future, but sometimes needed benchmarks to see the correct timeline for the people around her. _Ebb and flow, choice_ \- she called them currents.   
  
Cassian shook his head.  
  
Her hair freed, Elain nodded sharply and grabbed his sword arm. Traced her hand down searchingly, until she squeezed his wrist. “There’s a torn piece of grey silk around your pulse, yes or no?”  
  
A year of struggle and ceaseless violence, but Cassian apparently still had the ability to blush.  
  
Elain took that as all the answer she needed, and released him. “I have something for you.”

Cassian wasn’t sure what he was expecting- a prediction, maybe? Foresight of whatever brutal injuries he was about to allow inflicted on his body?-but the sudden scent of Nesta, _fire without bound, forests older than promise,_ assailed him.  
  
Elain had summoned to present a weapon. It wasn’t a sword, nearly the length of a spear. A _scythe._   
  
Deadly curve black as Illyrian steel, the blades edge spilled a gold light that promised flame. _Nesta’s fire_ \- he’d recognize it, dead and blind. Wrapped around the handle, another ribbon, the precise color of Elain’s robe: _glory._   
  
Glory in battle-rage, in honor, in the true of raging heart.   
  
Cassian’s heartbeat roared to frantic life, pounding faster than the bone drums that called them to doom.   
  
Suddenly much less _airy-_ sharp and vibrant and utterly present before him, Elain pressed her sister’s token of love, a death blessing, into his grip. “Nesta Archeron sends her regards to Rhysand and the Court of Night.”  
  
The touch her hand pushed at his mind- a memory unfolding that belonged to neither of them.   
_  
Dominance. Fear. Hopelessness. Hatred at submission_. _Burning shame._ _Loss that spooled on into eternity._

Cassian blinked, gasped, and found himself staring straight into the nearly Illyrian-dark eyes of Elain Archeron, hard as flint. “He wanted her afraid. Made her bow her head when she was already ready to die. Do you understand? Don’t let him take these mountains, Cassian. Don’t let Rhysand keep a _fucking inch_ of the land where your heart lives.”  
 _  
Nesta Archeron sends her regards.  
_  
Cassian had given himself body and soul to Illyria. Wrenched apart the only life he’d ever known for that chance that they could come back from destruction, rise again to glory that went beyond constant war.  
  
He’d do it again. Cassian would gladly die, and take the whole festering Court of Nightmares with him for a world where Illyrians had homes and safety, childhoods and the protection of their mountain gods.  
  
But for Nesta? His love, his honor, the rage of the storm- Cassian would unleash hell, and live.  


***  
They said the Illyrians won the war because Death herself had sided with them.  
  
Cassian, even a hundred years later, only remembered it in fractures- a red world painted with rage and siphon light, fire and heat that burned down a five thousand year old empire.  
Darkness flung across the valley, killing black that had never known open air.  
  
That the first true volley was _theirs_ \- magma that rained down from the sky, hot as the face of the sun, burning through ward and shadow and protection. The ground that shook as Illyrians took to the skies, one rung in the ribs that slung across their land’s heart, sacrificed beneath Lucien Vanserra’s power.  
  
They said Death walked with Cassian into the fray.  
  
The Lord of Bloodshed who fought like a berserker, the red rage of Illyrian glory, Death’s scythe burning the dark before it could touch him.  
  
Less than five hundred Illyrian’s against an ancient and wicked thousand- every able bodied adult their people had left.   
  
The very air sang. _Vengeance without mercy. Honor without compromise.  
  
For our daughters.   
  
For our fallen sons.   
  
For all that was lost that will all come again.  
_  
The horizon long gone behind clouds of smoke and raw power, Azriel dragged the High House of the Court of Nightmares into the dark to die, one by one.  
  
They said that when her mate was spent and her family bloodied, Elain Archeron herself climbed upon the obsidian altar and opened her veins to the mountain gods. Cauldron born and Cauldron blessed, the earth tore as her voice joined the wind.  
  
They said in the maelstrom- in the _awakening_ \- it was Cassian who called the storm.  
  
A bastard- an orphan- a beaten child who’d grown into a dangerous man, and would allow no such pain to be visited on anyone else.  
  
He remembered the wind. The ocean of fire in his chest that grew brighter and hotter with every kill, the dance of death that was his birthright and honor and burden.   
  
He remembered the _pulse-_ the single heartbeat that rebounded through every Illyrian alive.

Cassian remembered feeling like he was being torn in two- and remembered thinking _good- he would bleed- he would burn- he would rip apart the darkness with his bare hands until Rhysand begged for mercy, for respect, to be allowed the raise his head- they called us dogs, they called us animals-  
_  
And then the sky opened.

One lightening strike was a _blessing.  
_  
Response to prayer.  
  
A thousand was a rage that had grown for millennia, pain that lived in Cassian’s bones, his mothers, mothers, mothers agony.   
  
Every suffering son and broken daughter, every word lost in a tongue that had once shaped the wind, every cold starving winter chained to the ground among a people born for the sky.  
  
They say, that when the ground shook and the sky broke, the High Lord retreated.  
  
Cassian, later, would doubt Rhys had ever been in the mountains at all.  
  
They said he sought refuge in his City of Starlight, while his nobles burned. While the Court of Nightmares ran, the length and breathe of Illyria reduced to a storm that wanted their lives, _their souls_ , and would take them. 

They say that Cassian followed, bathed in blood and firelight, and led a hundred Illyrians south. Their wingbeats were thunder, their voices the wind, and where they landed Death and lightning struck.  
  
Nothing stood in their way.  
  
They say that the High Lord tried to leave his city and was stopped, by his own Second and Third.  
  
They say the Amren carved a new border into the land, and tithed blood to the hungry Illyrian North to stop the storm’s spread south when it reached the city walls. That the Morrigan herself restrained the High Lord of Night from rejoining the fight and watched, as the mountains burned.   
  
Only then, did he take to the sky.   
— 

Nesta Archeron woke from a restless night with the phantom taste of blood in her mouth and hair that reeked of pyres.

The warmth of the library flooded beneath her skin and insisted, _come._ _Come and see. Look, daughter, look.  
_  
She followed it without an ounce of fear.  
  
In the atrium of the collection she’d first slammed her way into, the secret heart of a High Lord she could actually call a friend, treasure waited for her.   
  
All at once, the full-bodied adrenaline of anxiety she’d been suppressing blazed to life, carrying Nesta light-headed on quick feet to a pillaged honor. Twelve swords, stabbed straight through into the granite, emblazoned with the twelve house sigils of the Court of Nightmares ruling families.  
  
The proof of their royal blood, symbol of their endowed ancient rule.  
  
Rhysand really had sacrificed them- old and difficult enemies, nearly half distantly related to him- rather than free the mountains. Five years undisturbed as Amren had once wanted for her, and Nesta could have ruled that dark court with her power, bent it into something better. Typical. The worst, most wasteful choice.   
  
Looped jaunty over a pommeled, half-melted, hung the coronet the High Lords seneschal, Keir’s blood still staining the stones.  
  
Nesta understood the old ways far better than she ever had affection for the howling wind or biting cold. The sword of an enemy; the favored grace of bloodshed and valor spent, given to another. The half-forgotten prayer for their fallen called upon such a thing: an honor deserved by a heart that could be found in the wheeling stars of death or the winds of life unchanged.  
  
There was, in Illyrian terms, no greater possible declaration of intent.  
  
Alone, free of curious eyed judgment or broken history, Nesta let herself smile.  
  
After all, at her feet, separate from the pile of blood-reeking steel and nearly evanesced royal investiture, lay a crown.  
  
The war crown of the High Lord of Night. Raven-winged and black diamond studded, as savagely beautiful as when she saw it in her nightmares. Its twin, moonstone and pure white, was missing, as was exactly right.  
  
The black wing that had once fallen across Rhysand’s brow was bent, the clear impression of a vicious grip that had ripped it free.  
  
Nesta would know the shape of that hand blind.  
 _  
The Kingdom of Illyria hails Nesta Archeron, glory to her name._


	4. Reborn

Cassian woke up, to seething purple eyes and a broken sword.  
  
The wind screamed _love is not love that is not equal_. Rhysands words were echoes that barely reached him in the storm- _my brother my right hand my friend my family Cassian no no no no_ \- a blur that he’d later discern was coming wordless straight into his brain, fundamental barriers shattered. 

All that sank through the ocean of fire and howling wind was _my_.  
  
Cassian would never be owned again.  
  
He might be possessed by one person- willingly given. He belonged to his people, and no crown or authority would break them again.  
  
Starless sky rushed to meet him, the tide of the maelstrom.  
  
Cassian woke up on fire.  
  
Shrouded in it, a dome of flame between himself and a lightening struck world. A barrier between him and the ageless darkness, spilling from the blade of a scythe. _Nesta,_ he remembered, and slept.

Cassian woke up in the mountains.  
  
No part of his body didn’t hurt, blood flaking from skin as he hauled himself upright with a groan to take in the bright world swimming before his tired eyes. A hand, tiny but iron, forced him back down to the ground.  
 _  
Nesta,_ he thought, before a cloud of pale hair blew into his face.  
  
“Stay down, you _brave insane bastard_.” Lucien growled, somewhere out of his limited sight. The word that was a thousand layers of hatred in other high fae mouths held nothing but respect, carried no sting. Lucien Vanserra, who’d melted down a mountain to free Cassian’s people. “ _Fucking_ \- Az, grab him.”  
  
A cold, utterly familiar hand pressed against Cassian’s forehead. He didn’t realize he’d been flailing, wings out and scraping ground, until much less gently, Azriel also grabbed the front of his armor and _forced_ his body flat.   
  
“Cas? Cassian, can you hear me?”  
  
“He’s definitely coming out of it,” Elain sighed, softly. “Look at the sky.”  
  
Despite being just aware enough to understand she wasn’t speaking to him, Cassian wrenched back open his eyes. Pale half-light blue of early, early morning. Cloudless, the stark Illyrian sky of home. High mountain wind softened back to it’s natural rhythm, carrying cold clarity and-  
  
“ _Wha_ \- Nesta?”  
  
Every pull of air- why he’d ever been able to confuse Elain’s touch with her’s- her scent, magnified a thousand times. His most secret dreams; a Nesta who held him, allowed Cassian the sanctuary of her arms and the intimacy to bury his face in her neck.   
  
Even soft immortal skin couldn’t have carried it _this_ strongly.  
  
He could smell the embers that floated from phantom fire, the smoke. Cedar and pine, alight. Its entangled twin that had always defied description: truly ancient living forest, something green and sacred.   
  
The almond oil that she’d used in her hair as a human. Strong black tea that she’d stolen from the House of Winds kitchen when she and Elain had been consigned there, that he’d silently replaced again and again, left for her every new place she lived after. Ink that stained her hands. Hyberns blood on her freshly immortal skin.   
  
The sharp, impossible to miss scent of starborn Illyrian steel.  
  
Azriel’s sigh was much louder than Elain’s and implied very different things. “He’s awake.”  
  
“What.” Cassian gasped, becoming forcibly aware that it _hurt like hell_ to breathe _._ Azriel eased off his chest. “What _happened_?”  
  
Lucien dropped to the ground to join Azriel kneeling at Cassians side, replacing his hands over the ruin of Cassian’s torso. Gold light glowed as his ribs began to knit back together, blood disappearing under the illumination.  
  
“You _died,_ ” Lucien hissed at the same time Az’s gravel voice admitted, “You confronted Rhys.”  
  
Pain as bone snapped back into place took the reply from Cassian’s mouth, but he was pretty sure the garbled shape of Nesta’s name was still recognizable. Must have been, because Lucien and Azriel exchanged a searing look before either replied.  
  
“Something _happened_ ,” Lucien started, visibly gentled, “How much do you remember?”  
  
At his bewilderment, maybe in answer, Elain reappeared as a merciful hand, pulling what looked like bone shards and viscera out of Cassian’s hair. The kindness _cracked_ something inside him, cut into the full sensory wave of _Nesta_ enough that he could listen.  
  
“You woke the mountains,” Elain told him, the resolute perception of a seer who knew the exact shape of the world. “I helped- and the gods took you.”  
  
Cassian groped in the black hole of his mind that wanted to rest, to breathe in- “The storm?”  
  
She nodded. But it was Azriel who spoke, words rough. “Your voice was the _wind._ We slaughtered the Darkbringers, lightening took out the rest.”  
  
“How- how many did we lose?”  
  
The words were rough, Cassian realized, because Azriel’s eyes were damp.

“None _._ ”  
  
Lucien took up the tale, sagging against Azriel's side as the last of Cassian’s injuries melted away. He gathered both of Az’s scarred hands in his own bloodstained grip before speaking, white-knuckled. “You went after Rhys like fucking vengeance. I can’t hear the air, but I could hear you. The storm followed, lightening didn’t stop striking until”-  
  
Azriel interrupted, with ruinous cold. “Your heart stopped.”  
  
“You were dead when we found you,” Lucien agreed, throat bobbing, “Rhys was already back behind the city walls, he must have retreated to Feyre. I tried to- to restart your heart. But the second we touched you, the scythe ignited.”

_Cocooned in flame_ , Cassian remembered. Safe in the fire.

“Once the flames covered you, the rain started. _It wasn’t,_ what came out of the clouds wasn’t _water._ ”  
  
Ageless darkness. Fathomless depth. Cassian had seen it. He knew before Elain said the words.  
  
“It was the Cauldron,” She said, twisting off the end of the braid she’d been weaving into Cassian’s hair. “Water that isn’t water, the eternity that makes and binds. The clouds brought true dark to fight the Night, and remade everything that touched its waters. No one has come out of the city since, but it didn’t hurt them.”  
  
The Cauldron. The power that had been stolen and reborn, lifeblood drunk down in the depths. The wind _tasted_ like her- because she’d remade the world. Taken it back without claiming it.   
  
“ _Nesta,_ ” Cassian breathed again, prayer to god that she was. And then, belated, “The city?”  
  
Lucien swore, but Azriel gamely rose to support him when Cassian staggered to his feet.

He was still blinking- and listing, dangerously- when Lucien ducked under his other arm, a stone pillar prompting him upright. He took the support with numb gratitude.

What Cassian was seeing didn’t make _sense_.  
  
Every cell in his body- every sense, even the ones screaming _Nesta, Nesta, Nesta_ \- told Cassian he was standing on the southernmost reach of the Illyrian mountains. The sky itself overhead the crisp color of high elevation, the wind that belonged to the North a gentle living thing against his wings.  
  
Before the four of them, Elain falling into the line on Lucien’s other side, absently brushing rocks off Cassian’s arm as she did so, was Velaris.  
  
The northwestern wall of the City of Starlight was more than twelve thousand years old, a citadel that had never before been breached. Now, it was smoking faintly, riven with ash. If Cassian strained he could hear the distant sounds of life, could easily glimpse the dawn dark gleam of the sea as it met the harbor, all the way down the sleeping Sidra.  
  
Cassian shook his head, but there it was.  
  
Wind whipping her hair, Elain explained. “You came back in the flood. Once you were breathing, the land began to grow. The gods live, the mountain’s hearts beat again, and Rhysand drew a new border that caged in the southern half of his territory. This is Illyria now, and it always will be.”  
  
Illyria.  
  
Not one range, one cold, isolated corner of a vast Court held by foreign hands.   
  
A hundred leagues of fertile earth, a thousand peaks that touched the sky.  
  
Cassian stood on the edge of his homeland with the family he’d chosen, and breathed in the triumph that sang on the wind. 

***  


_They say, the Night lost to the North on the day the High Lord lost his wings.  
  
The sky burned, the ground shook, the High Lord of Night tried one last time to command his bloodsworn brother, and lost even the chance at the blessed sky for his pride.   
  
Rhysand fell to earth and took with him the Lord of Illyria, burning like a comet.  
  
But Death was not done with her exalted heart, her loyal right hand. She raised her head, and the rain fell.  
  
Blacker than darkness, older than time, the mountains rose from eternity. _

_***_

The crown of a man who’d once forced her to kneel was not the only gift waiting for Nesta _._

The white marble hall and golden glass dome of the death rites collection was a particular favorite, gilded serene. The only place she’d found yet tangibly in Day where plants refused to grow- the stone itself lived instead, humming beneath her feet. Nesta had been there just the afternoon before. She didn’t question when the Library directed her with something like a pleased sigh, unfurling against Nesta’s subconscious.  
  
She walked through the glass and froze. White billowed with Nesta’s harsh exhale, the normally sun drenched rooms cold as a grave.

A part of her- _distant, human_ \- acknowledged that she should be _afraid.  
_  
Absolute surety of who’d been here and what had happened shouldn’t have driven an incredulous, laughing breath from her, but it did. Nesta reached to touch the nearest wall, every glorious pale carved inch smoothly perfect beneath her fingertips.  
  
Nesta knew it wasn’t stone anymore.  
  
Walls of pure bone, immaculately preserved ivory, the carvings ran wild from floor to the very base of the dome, crenelation that hadn’t been there before like femurs of some imaginary creature. A home for these books long forgotten- a home for her, made with a loving hand.   
  
The South wall was her story, and she followed it first.  
  
Nesta and her sisters being born. Their mothers poisoning at the hands of their father’s friend. Ruin, starvation, suffering, the fall of noble House Archeron into deadly obscurity.  
Feyre’s first kidnapping, Nesta trying to chase after. Her transformation, the Queens meeting, the Seond Hybernian War, an immortal King dead by Nesta and Elain’s efforts.  
  
The Cauldron, bleeding out as she drank down its power, a cursed shell left behind to serve Hybern, while eternity grew reborn beneath bone elsewhere.   
  
Leaving the North. Herself under the rays of the sun, fire in one hand, a book in the other, sole keeper of eternal knowledge, sole ruler of the Ten Thousand. Unbent, unwavering, pomegranates split ripely open at her feet.  
  
The Northern wall was more chaotic, less glory and more gore, intention clear even without color. Mountains growing to the sky, old and monstrous gods whose shape seemed to change under her gaze waking from the bones of the land.  
  
The High Lord of Night, wings ripped from his back, falling from the sky with a bloody deathgrip on the man who’d once been a brother.  
  
War, ended in a single battle. Freedom won in flesh and ancient balance restored. 

The note was carved into the monstrous femurs, twenty feet in the air.Obligingly, still radiating a strange giddiness like sparkles behind her eyes, the Library provided Nesta a platform as she translated out the Leshon Hakodesh.  
 _  
Fresh-born sister,_ it read, _you have been busy while I was returning to physical form. Stryga rests with the ancestors, but you I see, have had a hand in clearing my city. My thanks, Queen of Knowledge._

_Our kin rise from the dark, True Flame, should you weary of your words, find refuge in the City of Obsidian Bone, it gates will ever open to you._

Nesta pressed her hands to her face and laughed.  
  
They’d been told again and again- if the Cauldron is whole, if the Cauldron wakes, if the Book is opened, if the Book is read- the old things would wake. The warning rang in every step toward war, every half-cocked, reckless choice Nesta’s sister and the High Lord had made. 

The Illyrians had brought back their grateful gods with blood and song. The Stone Folk had ever fed their’s dreams. Mountain hearts beat anew. Prythian, always alive, always _magic,_ could hold in slumber ancient things no longer. 

There was no question that Rhysand would ever remember the old sacrifices his house might have once made. How they’d ever garnered secrets to entrap and take, fighting against truly immortal foes.   
  
He’d cleared his whole troublesome gentry like a farmer burning a field.  
  
Without even thinking of that fact that such fire would be _fuel.  
_   
Perhaps he’d hoped to vilify Illyria, maybe he’d simply been tired of the constant threat- the end result was the same. The High Houses slaughtered in a wave of power, their servants and slaves doubtless fleeing- Nesta knew in ways she couldn’t describe or explain that the Bone Carver wouldn’t hurt them, god of truth and tales that he was, he cared only for the dead- the mountain returned to the hands of those who’d made it.   
  
The Carver, of the Hewn City.  
  
Complete with strength freshly regained from lives ended.   
  
A senseless _waste_ \- a chink in his defenses that couldn’t be reforged. Rhysand had courted mad destruction and let death in, forgetting the apotheosis of such walked free on many feet and knew his name.   
  
Nesta hoped Rhysand enjoyed having godly neighbors.  
  
She for one, knew she would. Nesta moved in light steps, unsurprised in the least when the connective door she’d identified and avoided for months now had been replaced in an open threshold.  
  
Carved bone and gold, death overlaying glorious day: _be ever welcome, sister.  
_  
Nesta stepped through into fathomless dark, and set about mapping what books she would be stealing from the private collection of the deceased High Houses of Night. 

***  


That Mor thought it was safe to winnow into the middle of what had twenty hours before been a war zone shouldn’t have surprised Cassian.  
  
After all, Morrigan lived under the benevolent protection of a High Lord. What did she have to fear from Illyrians? Cassian and Azriel had watched her back since they were hardly more than children.  
  
They weren’t children anymore.  
  
It certainly didn’t surprise Elain, who excused herself and a High Priestess moments before the wards shook to life. Cassian had a sword in his hand before the warning shattered the air, but Lucien to grabbed him.  
  
“She’s coming back.”  
  
And back Elain came, gaze Illyrian dark, expression borrowed from her older sister that seemed to draw blood from the air itself.   
  
She deposited Mor- who’d she’d been _dragging,_ a show of superior strength that had Cassian questioning for the tenth, hundredth time, what exactly the Cauldron gave her before Nesta swallowed it whole- into the middle of the tent with a dreamy smile. “Poor form invading, Morrigan.”  
 _  
Archeron’s never stopped being dangerous._   
  
Lucien coughed a laugh.  
  
Cassian couldn’t _imagine_ what Mor was thinking. That they’d once been family- family that had mattered more than blood ever could- and that could spare her the hatred Illyrians felt for Nights High Fae?  
  
For the office she held and Court she represented. _Embodied:_ the charming public face of the mysterious, brutal North.  
  
That with her winsome smiles and merry plots that had populated centuries of friendship, she could be a bridge between risen Illyria and _Rhysand_? She was his third, the golden hands of diplomatic might and Cassian, even more than Azriel, had betrayed his vows and broken kinship to become something else.  
  
Something more.  
  
Something Cassian, no matter how much it hurt, knew was better.  
  
Morrigan had left violence long behind for centuries of court politics- but Keir had _died_ under Illyrian hands less than two sunrises ago. She wasn’t stupid.  
  
Gold hair braided off her face, Mor raised her chin. Drew herself up off the ground in a flurry of black skirts like menance. “Your is sister still mopping blood off Rhys, and _you’re_ here?”  
  
“My sister is at this exact moment kissing her High Lord, as it turns out the injury of impermanent parts is just that.”  
  
Elain never, ever sounded more like Nesta, hostility bleeding from every note of her musical voice. It should have hurt. Gods, Cassian had never noticed before the identical way they both threw back their shoulders, like nothing in the world could touch them. Like a _dare_ , to try.  
  
Fearless. Fucking _furious_.   
  
Cassian nearly smiled at the sheer similarity, until Morrigan made the fatal mistake of reaching for Elain’s arm.  
  
Even before Lucien moved, an Illyrian clan mother was between the reach of the middle Archeron and Rhysand’s third, voice deep as the mountain chasms. “You will not raise a hand here, _’yshur._ We do not belong to you anymore.”  
  
Az caught his gaze in time to see the automatic wince.   
  
It was an _old_ word, probably one of the few they both knew in their more than half extinct mother tongue. _Betrayer_ \- something worse, something that implied both perversity and faithlessness.   
  
Cassian hurried to Elain’s other side. The traditional address for a High Priestess or Clan Mother- _especially a clan mother_ \- differed based on your own clan. Cassian was, if dim precious memory could be proved, born of flame clan bloodlines.  
  
It seemed impossible his mother could have been anything else with her coloring: green eyes, gold shot hair and wings. Soft, sandy-hued hands holding onto the darker brown of his chubby toddler arms, the only goodbye Cassian had ever gotten.   
  
Illyrians of the east, so long ground out of existence by Morrigan’s ancestors no one alive knew their words.  
  
Cassian hoped respect could be a stand-in. The bloodshed _needed_ to be over. For his people, for his family- for Cassian’s still nebulous, dazed sanity. _What the hell did Mor think she was doing?_

Elain silkily interjected before he could, a word that was all vowels and breath. When the Clan Mother smiled, repeated the phrase back the still, tense air in the tent stirred. _Shifted._

Cassian’s heart caught in his throat. 

“Ch’rii,” Elain exhaled, and Morrigan was able to pull her arm free.  
  
Cassian managed to nod his respect, grace to his elder, without asking, without shattering: is that what it was supposed to _sound_ like? How much had been lost, how much could he learn?  
What still existed of Illyria that could be remembered into rebirth, reclaimed before it was all forgotten?  
  
He managed to swallow, _focus,_ dipping his head once more. “We have some personal business that must be handled, blessed mother. “  
  
Shocking as words that stirred wind, the proud ancient face before him bowed, lower even than his reverently dropped chin. 

“My king, we await you.” The words straightened his spine, alighted Cassian’s skin like Nesta’s phantom touch. “The cloud brothers are available, if you have need.”  
  
A play on words that dropped the temperature by several degrees. _Cloud brother_ \- because mountain clouds held more foggy moisture than fell to earth, because those young Illyrians were in training to be healers.   
  
They mopped up the _blood.  
_   
A sweep of vermillion in exit, and Cassian had nothing left but to face his friend of these long years, her families blood on his hands, the threat of his people to her safety lingering between them.  
  
“King?” Morrigan asked, with a faint, tinkling laugh that had Lucien reaching for a knife. Cassian tracked his motion as the brittle sound echoed, a mockery of air stirring Illyrian words. “You can never return to Velaris, but I don’t imagine you need me to tell you that.”  
  
Cassian knew.  
  
He’d known it the night he chose bleeding to death rather than fight back against even a a single Illyrian. Cassian would break if he were the hands that pulled them from the sky, couldn’t be complacent in hammering home authority for his brother, _his friend,_ in this lonely starving corner of an ancient empire.   
  
Cassian knew he could never go home _because it wasn’t home.  
_  
Five hundred years, and he’d never sought a residence for himself in Velaris. Half of each year beneath starlight, but homecoming was dawn over Illyria, the wind at his back, Nesta’s burning touch remarking him strong, whole.  
  
He loved Velaris. He missed it already- but it had never, ever, been where he belonged.  
  
Cassian twisted his head to look at Azriel, fathomless Illyrian eyes black. Reflecting everything that Cassian couldn’t say, the pain that was burning his throat- _they’d chosen another way._ The only way that was true. It had given Cassian claim to his own soul, a place and rightness in his world. Given Azriel _love,_ the peace he’d deserved and craved for centuries. 

Neither of them had ever considered going _back_.

Azriel sighed. “Mor, why did you come?”

At the gravel, exhausted sound of his voice, Lucien relaxed. Unclenched his hand from the dagger hilt and flourished it toward Elain, the absurd grace of his movements echoed as she danced a step past Mor like the other woman wasn’t even there.   
  
Azriel softened for a single second to send an adoring look after him, before Lucien and Elain left them, the first three members of what had once been the Court of Dreams.  
  
Alone, Mor actually answered. “Rhysand sent me, but”-  
  
It was Azriel who spoke, but Cassian who bristled. “He had no right to ask that of you.”  
  
“ _But,_ ” Morrigan continued, every bit as glorious and stubborn as the day they’d met, “I was coming anyway.”  
  
For just a second, the heat blooming in Cassian’s chest was close to love. Mor, the first High Fae to ever touch Cassian with kindness. Morrigan, who’d kept peace in their tiny family for centuries, a tie that had never strained until they’d wanted it to include others. Mor, who wouldn’t chose a side and shouldn’t have to.  
  
Who Cassian had let himself think of as _helping_ when she fought with Rhysand over the Illyrians: _they were too backward, brutal, they needed intervention.  
_  
The last living member of the High Houses who’d marched into his mountains with more than double their numbers and orders to kill any Illyrian they could find. 

There would have been no peace.  
  
Without Cassian- without Azriel and Lucien, without Elain and a dozen priestesses who’d broken Night Court law their entire lives, without Nesta- it would have been a slaughter.  
  
The Darkbringers didn’t accept surrenders. Rhysand hadn’t come to the field- _to the mountains-_ to enforce command. The last five hundred of Cassian’s people would have been killed, all the way down to the youngest children. _  
_  
Cassian realized he was _angry._   
  
At Morrigan, who’d come here like the world belonged to her. At Rhysand, who’d held onto his authority right until the end, until it cost Cassian’s life.

At thousands of years of High Fae punishing his people until Cassian felt like crying at the sound of a single sentence in his mothers language. 

The gods were awake- Cassian’s gods had heard him, and he didn’t even know their names.  
  
Azriel, who could probably smell it, could doubtless _feel_ the explosion that Morrigan’s appearance had ignited, moved close enough their shoulders brushed. Ignored whatever Morrigan meant- she’d doubtless tell them before this was done, exactly what she thought of the violence that enfolded- and took on the most glaring, unavoidable part. 

“I grieve your grief,” Azriel intoned, a perfect, honorable Illyrian, “Death was quick.” _  
_  
He wouldn’t lie. Didn’t bother with the falsehood of apology, and Cassian found that he agreed. How many people had Keir killed in the last century alone?   
  
How many Night Court citizens technically protected by Rhysand’s laws, disappeared into that mountain, never to be seen again?  
  
How many _bestial fae,_ as the High Houses had called them, like Cassian, _like the boatload of kids Azriel and Lucien were going to have,_ had been slowly, brutally broken under the oppression of those very faeries Morrigan was supposed to control?  
  
Mor nodded, once, twice, the speed of her motions the tell her dark eyes didn’t yet give of threatening tears. “I knew what would happen when they were sent to battle. My- _Keir_ was always going to die. I might have done it myself, given a few centuries.”  
  
She never would have.  
  
She never should have- and Rhysand should have never raised her to rule over her own bloodline.   
  
Morrigan had kept them contained, but she’d always stopped on the edge of actual control. They didn’t love her, they didn’t respect her, and so without resorting to violence or magical might, _they didn’t listen to her.  
_   
Morrigan had given up fighting after the first war.   
  
It was her right, her due- but five hundred years was too long to let Keir live, planning insurrection when he wasn’t torturing his subjects, ruling like a king himself over the most powerful families in Night.  
  
A constant threat: to Rhysand’s rule, to stability in the territory, to the population themselves, gone by Illyrian hands.  
  
It was the last time they would be used by the Lord of Night.   
  
Mor was watching Cassian- a ghost between them, the person he’d been two years, a hundred years ago, who would have already wrapped her in his arms by now. A careful intimacy that had never crossed lines, a stand-in over centuries for something real.   
  
Until Cassian had found something real, and Morrigan tried to stop it.

Nonetheless, the lie was easy, looking back at her growing bloodshot eyes. “I’m sorry, Mor."  
  
A threat slaughtered, peace achieved: and Morrigan’s family, dead in body as they’d been at heart.  
  
Five hundred Illyrians.   
  
A scarce, precious, less than hundred children. Cassian would have paid the cost a thousand times, to let them grow in peace. That their children would be the first in living Illyrian memory born without army tithes, the threat that a distant High Lord could call away their parents to fight and die at any time.  
  
To grow up protected, safe and treasured. Not brutalized for strength, not spit on by those who were meant to lead them. 

Cassian would kill and keep killing to make it true. 

A beat, a pause, Morrigan’s beautiful face briefly crumpling not at his words but in their aftermath, when Cassian didn’t move. He’d leaned too hard on her and she on him- Cassian could lie for kindness, but not with his body or choices. 

Azriel’s shoulder pressed harder against his, and Cassian was grateful.  
  
More so- stupidly glad he was close when Morrigan opened her mouth again, tone wholly different. “I’m not going to chase after her, but you’ll make sure Elain knows she’s welcome? She can return to the City, Lucien with her."  
  
Ink in water, the light of the room began to fade into shadow.  
  
“Elain and Lucien?”  
  
Clear and cold as ice. Morrigan barely blinked. The longer he looked at her, Cassian could see the exhaustion: braids to hide the unwashed hair, hands that wouldn’t quite steady. Grief and fury, unmoored.  
  
The world had changed without her, and Mor didn’t know what to do.  
  
“Of course. They have their house in Velaris, Feyre made arrangements, made sure it was taken care of.”  
 _  
Their house._ Like it was Lucien and Elain’s together, as though Rhys hadn’t purchased it to get Elain and what Feyre thought was upsetting _madness,_ out of her younger sister’s view.   
As if Elain didn’t live in one wing of the massive, absurdly large historic property, and Lucien with Azriel in the other.   
  
Feyre’s obsession with her sister’s happiness was guilt and _love,_ Cassian knew. But love had never precluded the fact that a person could fundamentally misunderstand even their family. Her hang-up on the _bond_ was understandable- Feyre had endured too much, was heartbreakingly young-but this was not.  
  
The muscle on Azriel’s jaw was jumping, grind of his teeth audible to Cassian’s ears.  
  
“Elain hates that house,” Cassian made himself say evenly, knowing Elain wouldn’t mind him speaking for her in this. She called it _the mad house_ , made jokes about belfrys in the face of the sweeping, Dawn-style architecture. “Feyre picked out everything in it, she can keep it.”  
  
To Cassian, not Mor, Azriel turned his head to murmur, “All that Lucien was able to get out of Spring is there, I’ll send Nuala.”  
  
Nodding to the voice in his ear, Cassian was unprepared for the fury that erupted with Morrigan’s interjection. 

“ _No you won’t. You can’t-_ fucking Vanserra can get his own things. You’re _banished._ Rhysand isn’t playing, I don’t know what he’ll do.”  
  
“Banished like Nesta Archeron was banished?” Azriel’s voice cut the air, a tone Cassian had never, ever imagined he’d use speaking to Mor. “In _secret?_ Or were we just stripped of our citizenship, back to the status of our birth? _How exactly did Rhys tread the legal loophole that Shadowsingers are property, not people?”  
_  
Like he hadn’t since they were teens, Cassian reached for Azriel’s hand and held on with all his strength as shadows bloomed uncontrolled from his skin.  
 _  
“Az,”_ Mor sounded like she was already weeping. “You know it’s not like that, you know none of us think”-  
  
Azriel, whose dark gifts and fearsome honor had protected them all, who’d been plucked out of imprisonment to live in service. He’d only ever been promised a few things by the High Lord Rhain, Rhysand’s father, who’d been more a parent to Azriel than his own son.  
  
That he’d never be caged. That Azriel could love who he wished and live by his own rules, so long as his precious power served their court and Rhain’s descendants. 

Unashamed. 

Valued. 

The knife in the right hand of Night.  
  
He’d lived by those words.   
  
Velaris had been a prison to all three of them for fifty horrible years, but Cassian had long feared it had felt like confinement to Azriel for centuries.   
_  
“It doesn’t matter what you think.”_ It was snarl, before Azriel breathed in, the air filling with scent of fire and spice as his voice dropped. “I have done everything Rhysand couldn’t stand to for five centuries. What couldn’t be stomached. You think I chose it? _I will never go back_ , and Lucien won’t set a single foot in that city.”  
  
“ _We were a family_ ,” Mor yelled. “We were- you think Rhys thought you were property? He loves you, you’re brothers, and ruined”-  
  
“It’s hard to be a family,” Azriel said, “When your brother owns you.”  
  
The fury faded from Morrigan all at once, until she visibly sagged. “He won’t allow anything to threaten Feyre. She’s so hurt, neither of them is really over the war, and this?” Mor shook her head, gaze jumping between them. “We’re two countries now, but…I still have my estate. You could come with me. We could make it home. Together.”  
  
Her desperation tasted like copper, brassy frantic hope. With a sickening lurch, Cassian took note that Mor had settled the whole force of her teary, pleading gaze, on Azriel.  
  
The words came numbly out of Cassian’s mouth in disbelief. “Five hundred years. _And now you want?”  
_   
Dark, dangerous, Azriel said to Mor and Mor alone, “You’ve been listening to Feyre.”  
  
Feyre, young and foolish, all loving heart. Who took things exactly at their first impression, whose dearest hope was all of them as paired off and bound as she was to Rhys.

Lucien was going to light her on fire.  
  
“She is our _High Lady._ ”

“I swore in blood five hundred years ago to a dead man I respected,” Azriel said, burning cold, “To keep you safe. By the blackness of the sky and the blazing mercy of the stars.” He made a noise, small, _terrible,_ and sliced the air with a bitter smile not at Morrigan, but Cassian _. “_ But I was born of Illyria and Illyria owes you nothing now. As do I.”  
  
He walked from the tent on silent feet, shadows disappearing in his wake.  
  
Cassian was so furious he was dizzy with it, air unstable around him. It didn’t matter: banished, betrayed, Azriel would no more return to heel under Night Court authority than Cassian.

“I think you should go, Mor.”  
  
But Morrigan only sighed, and tipped back her head to look at him. “You didn’t listen. I said, I was headed here anyway.”  
  
Cassian had enough to do that if he didn’t shut his eyes for the next month there’d still be leftover. Hadn’t rested since the deep sleep after death in a bed of Nesta’s fire. There was an entire _society_ to put back together- homes to build and laws to write and an entire more than half-forgotten world to dream anew.  
  
Cassian didn’t have time for Morrigan’s games, and he told her so.

“No, Cassian.” Tendrils of gold were escaping her braids, gossamer light sticking to the high patrician planes of her ruling families face. Her control had slipped enough that her skin was pale; nearly the moon pearl, sunless color of Mor’s true form. She was falling apart, right in front of him. “No- I came to tell you where she is.”  
  
Morrigan never looked like _the Morrigan,_ because she hadn’t used her full power in centuries.  
  
If she had- truth that frees, truth that kills, that which lays at the heart of every living thing- her face wouldn’t have mottled in confusion and answering aggression when Cassian started yelling.  
  
“ _Three to one,_ ” Cassian snarled. “Outnumbered three to one, two thousand Illyrians dead, and none of us- _not one of us_ \- asked you to fight Hybern. Five fucking centuries not touching the only gift of worth you inherited from Keir, and you used it to scry after _Nesta_?”  
  
Ruddy color suffused her cheeks as Mor growled right back. “I couldn’t- I didn’t choose a side. I owed you Cassian, and I know that”-  
  
“ _Owed?_ ” Cassian roared.  
  
It took a moment for the rest of the words to come out, Cassian fighting tooth and claw against the red of haze of his vision. “Nesta is not- Morrigan. You cannot owe me and give me Nesta in return.”  
  
Mor cringed. “ _That’s not_ \- you weren’t speaking to me.”  
  
He’d been done before the conversation ever started. With the very implication that he or Azriel would ever want to go back. Earlier. The length and breadth of the North sang of battle triumph, the story becoming clearer: famous Morrigan, the loyal Third who’d pulled Rhysand bleeding back into the safety of his City of Starlight.  
  
Cassian knew she’d seen his corpse. _She didn’t deserve his fucking apology.  
_   
“I wasn’t speaking to you, so you used magic to violate Nesta’s privacy?”  
  
“Don’t you want to know where she is?”  
  
She blinked those huge eyes at him, as though truly, she didn’t understand the problem.  
  
Morrigan, who lived like it was a song. Who’d wrapped herself sun drenched in a life she wasn’t born to, held on with both hands to what and who she cared for.  
  
To think, Cassian had once admired her for it.  
  
The words came like a flood. Summer rain, danger as lightening tinging the very air- would the wind ever listen to him? Cassian was sure as hell going to find out.  
  
“You can’t have it both ways.” She’d begun crying, silently, tears streaming toward her mouth as Mor shook her head. “You won’t use your power because of where it came from. But you’ll use it for _this? You could have helped._ You could have saved lives.”  
 _  
“Whose lives?_ There’s always rebellions.” Morrigan laughed again, that horrible splintered sound. “We’ve always put them down. You threw away everything”-  
  
“ _What do think put them down means,_ Mor? I meant me, here, _killing my own people_.”  
  
“You almost killed Rhys!”  
  
“I took what Illyria gave him,” Cassian snarled, every furious inch the man who’d brought lightening to earth, “And my gods thanked me.”  
  
For a heartbeat, Cassian sincerely thought she was going to hit him. Morrigan was certainly capable- that was what The Morrigan was. The maven of battle, the Sword of Truth. She’d been born to be a weapon of the High Houses, as every Morrigan before her.  
  
Rhysand had given her the chance to use that power to change them.  
  
And Morrigan had done _nothing.  
_   
“Was it all _so_ terrible? I just want to go back, before it went wrong. I want our family, Cassian.”  
  
Cassian snorted. “No amount of going back in time will make Az want to fuck you.”  
  
“That’s _not_ ”-  
  
“You’re still a terrible liar.”  
 _  
“Fine!_ It just want it back, I want all of us together. It doesn’t have to that. _So what if”-  
_   
“You don’t want either of us,” Cassian found himself roaring. _“What the hell are you doing?”  
_   
She just shook her head, crying. It hurt not to reach out- but it would have hurt more to lie. Fractures on every surface, but for the first time in five hundred years, Mor couldn’t fix this.  
  
And Cassian wouldn’t do it for her. 

She could reach all she wanted for a family she’d thought couldn’t be broken. People who’d never leave her, unlike her kinsman born. It hadn’t been a forever- he’d held his hands to heart and kept his eyes closed until the day it started _beating-_ but it had been worth fighting for.  
  
Anger seeped away. He didn’t want to yell anymore, Cassian just wanted it to be over.   
  
“It was always- Mor, you have to know we were always going to end up here. We”- _we lost our cities and our language and our history. We lost our way shaped by foreign hands. Ground down to nothing but a standing army. We were going to lose everything left-_ “Didn’t have a choice.”

Cassian had always known he’d die fighting.   
  
Hadn’t dreamed he’d have a chance for more until Nesta Archeron changed the shape of the world. He’d live- he’d keep doing the right thing, no matter how fraught and painful.  
  
“A choice? _Are you kidding me?_ You led a rebellion. You can never come home.”

Morrigan released her white knuckled grip on her own own arms, a cacophony of gold tumbling down to her wrists. Full black mourning- Night sky black pride- and still she wore a fortune of jewelry worth more than what an Illyrian might touch in centuries.   
  
Cassian bit his tongue as she went on.   
  
“ _This should have never happened! You stop speaking to me, you lead an army against Rhys”-  
_  
Very evenly, Cassian interrupted. “I didn’t have anything to say. After what you did- and then I was busy _trying not to get killed.”_

“What I did?” _  
_  
Fragile as glass, that last gilded snow globe of precious memory to be held shattered in the back of Cassian’s mind. Golden, glorious Morrigan, who would never admit she was wrong. Not even now, lashing out and saying things she didn’t mean.  
  
He didn’t yell back, huffed the echo of a laugh. “A century ago, you would have looked at Nesta Archeron and seen a comrade. Someone else who’d survived.”  
 _  
“Nesta?_ You did all this because of Nesta? She ran away.”   
  
Cassian wouldn’t waste precious mountain air to explain that _no,_ he’d done this because he was the only who could. For the mother he’d never known, for the next hundred generations who might have the chances he hadn’t.   
  
“Exiled,” He corrected, thinking of the way Nesta bent the tone of her voice until the sound itself was a blade. Nesta would have laughed in Morrigan’s face- Cassian had the honor to do her justice in her absence. “Thrown away. You know something about it.”

“You are not _seriously_ , comparing Feyre to- _to my parents?”_

Very quietly, Cassian managed, “No. Feyre’s choices just took from Nesta her body and her future. Turned around and punished her when she didn’t behave the way she wanted. When Nesta wanted to make her own decisions.”

“Her future? Cassian, she’s immortal. She’s _High Fae._ Nesta Archeron is”-  
  
“If you say _better off,_ ” Cassian ground out, “I’ll let Lucien come in here and winnow you back to Velaris himself. He’ll throw you a couple leagues deep in the ocean for what you said to his _husband._ ”

The flailing palms, gold bracelets sliding down her arms in articulated fury, froze.  
 _  
“Husband?”_

For a second, the flicker of hurt across her face stabbed at Cassian, the automatic impulse to comfort her grown over decades and centuries. But then Mor lifted her chin, features smooth and said, “So glad you all are a family. Your writ of banishment is at your house, I’m going home.”

The City of Starlight, the Rainbow under stars- the beautiful, undeclared capital of Night that lived like the rest of the territory didn’t exist.

Morrigan paused at the tent flap, and Cassian knew the words were coming before he heard them. “Nesta Archeron is not a victim. She _is_ better off, and she’s in the Day Court.”  
  
Cassian closed his eyes before he felt the phantom wind of her winnow.  
  
A slate wiped clean of anger and loss, truth that rebounded through his bones: _Cassian knew._

A spark nestled beneath his skin.  
  
Had he known since the battle? Since he’d sent the whole bleeding triumph of his soul to her feet by Azriel’s helpful hand?  
  
Since Nesta had saved his life.  
  
A thread of molten iron. Starsteel and spirit, the scent of her hair. Cassian couldn’t pin down the day, much less the hour: it had seeped back into his consciousness unnoticed, as natural a part as his lungs supporting his beating heart.  
  
A silken shred of belonging Cassian could have followed anywhere, that would always lead him back to Nesta. 

Home.

***

Beneath the wheeling stars, Illyrian wind never stilled against the mountains. Through gorge and valley, peak and vale, beneath the wind lay stone, and far beneath stone, a second sky. 

The heart of Illyria, blue as dawn.  
  
Cassian walked beneath the mountain to meet his gods.  
  
It had begun with a vote- which Cassian has insisted on while Azriel shook his head, while Lucien laughed, while priestesses and warrior alike insisted _no, we will have fealty._ Sacred promise, bound to skin in ink, paid in blood- Illyria united, Illyria re-divided among these few, precious remnants on what had once been a thousand clans, new Lords and Ladies decided with Elain’s keen eye of the future.  
  
A council, every clan an equal voice.

They would accept this, they would accept even the idea that the stranded Night Court citizens were members of the Illyrian nation- _betrayal,_ it was muttered darkly, _Night betrays even it’s own kind?  
  
Night would abandon its loyal people, for no other reason than cowardice?   
_  
It became a point of pride- and so Cassian brought them to the table too: wild fae of the forest, a hundred shapes the Hewn City had called _bestial,_ poorer High Fae who lived outside the manors and cities, whose magic was spent on the growing of crops. 

Illyria took them all, a binding of blood accepted tighter with every promise.   
  
Cassian wanted a new world, a better one.  
  
But Illyria, a land saved by the hands of women- Illyria, a fearsome place that slaughtered every single endowed lord- Illyria voted, and Illyria asked, for a King.

A King as of old, of legend- and Illyria reborn wanted no King but Cassian.

And so the priestesses took him to this secret land- a sky beneath the sky they’d always known existed but never walked. Down through stone Illyrian black, glory’s vermillion, down and down into the mountains where a heartbeat could now be felt- where the stone had seemed to breath since the day Illyrian rose again it’s forbidden altars. 

King was one of the words they remembered- a secret kept for generations, the Illyrian language forbidden almost into bleak ancient history by the Court of Night.  


King. _Sky-loved._

Chosen by his people, Cassian could command every Illyrian alive. Chosen by his gods, he might touch the heart that was the sky, speak the wind forevermore.  
  
If trying didn’t end his life.   
  
Water that was not water- _it looked like dawn of a summer day. It looked like home, like starlight, like Nesta Archeron’s eyes_ \- filled a cavern that went on forever, the heartbeat of the mountain a gentle tide stirring fathomless depth.  
 _  
Only the chosen may touch,_ the eldest Priestess of Illyria told him, a woman who's mother had been born free in a Kingdom only their own.   
  
And Cassian was thinking- how many Illyrian’s died, to keep this secret? How many words will we never remember? How can the gods chose me when Night took all- took all there was to take until a few hundred years more would have been the end?

Cassian was thinking _, how can it be me?  
_  
Born in killing Illyrian might, but how many Illyrian’s had he killed? How many lives had he taken to ensure the rule of the High House of Night?  
  
Cassian was thinking _, he didn’t want to die anymore.  
_   
Water lapped at his ankles. 

The sky opened before him.  
 _  
Sky-loved. Loyal. Honored. Red-glory of Illyria. _The gods loved their son, loved a vengeance torn through the world, loved a heart that would not yield.   
  
The gods loved.  
  
As Cassian did- every single tiny set of wings spread in first flight, every single summer flower petal of high mountain delight. Each valley, each peak, every tree and every inch. Every single sword arm steadied, every face turned to the dreaming northern sky.   
  
Their gods belonged to Illyria. No matter how long they’d slept or how far they’d wander.  
  
So too, did Cassian.  
  
The sea of stars, the sky of the mountains- Cassian saw and loved it all, let it drag him deep.   
  
He woke to sun. To bright light on his face, the wind in his hair, back to facing the sky he’d flown in every day of his life.  
  
The obsidian peak of the blood rite before him, the range that still housed the gathered remains of his people at his back, Cassian rose to his feet atop Ramiel’s sister mountain, and found he was not quite alone were his gods had delivered him.

The quirked brow and utterly beautiful, unfamiliar face of the High Lord of Dawn swum before his disbelieving eyes.  
  
Shock- obvious enough that Thesan sighed. “I’m not sure I’ve timed this correctly.”  
  
Cassian had permanently, violently altered one High Lord this week- as much as he had no reason to fight Dawn’s benevolent Lord, these mountains were not for foreign High Fae any longer.  
  
“Thesan.”  
  
The High Lord dipped his head for half a second, “You are Cassian, I presume.” When he didn’t unwind or make any attempt at courtesy, Thesan sighed again, and pointed up at the sky, sleeves billowing in the wind. “Your borders are untouched, my husband and I came by way of flight.”  
  
High, high above, barely visible even to Cassian’s eyes, Peregrine wings flashed pale through the clouds.  
  
There was shock, and then there was plain admiration- “You _married_ the Captain of your guard?”  
  
Thesan smiled. “We’ve always been married. It is only to other courts we play the game- one unnecessary here.”  
  
Rhain, Rhysand’s father who frankly remained the most frightening, _monstrous_ High Fae man Cassian had ever seen, Hybern included, hadn’t been powerful enough to force acceptance of his lesser wife. No matter that they were mates, no matter that she was only _Lady_ , not High Lady- Rhain had survived no less than sixteen assassination attempts at the hands of his own people after his marriage.  
  
“And unnecessary in Dawn?”  
  
That small smile grew. “Dawn is not a court like Night- if we had known of the civil war, we would have been here sooner.”  
  
That, Cassian could not in fact, actually imagine. Dawn was peaceful to it’s core. Ferocious despite it when it called upon, righteous in the face of a true threat- but a court who’s inner politics were famously measured.  
  
Why risk discontent? Why risk anything, to help a savage uprising?  
  
“Would you have?”  
  
He didn’t want to fight Thesan, he didn’t want to fight anyone- but Cassian would do what had to be done. For Illyria. For himself. For the fragile, half-impossible future.  
  
Thesan met his gaze. “You misunderstand me, Lord of Illyria. I ask nothing of you, or your people. Only the chance to repay a debt my bloodline has carried for a millennia.”  
  
The wind seemed to still.

“Once, before we were Dawn, my grandmothers, grandmothers, grandmother died at the hands of an invasion. A cataclysm upon my people. Every heart that beats for the sun’s rise exists only because we were given aid.”  
  
A debt- _revenge.  
  
Cassian didn’t want to die.  
_  
“We escaped through the sky,” Thesan concluded. “Our High Lords have carried the secret each generation, waiting for a time to come when we could repay our impossible debt.”  
  
The history in Night Court books went like this- savage Illyria, broken, bloody Illyria, unreasonable, ferocious, untamed Illyria. Cassian knew none of it was true, held in his heart the fact that their violent history was far from what defined his people.  
  
He had never once imagined, somewhere else in Prythian, that Illyria was _remembered._  
  
They needed a thousand things- homes not built of timber, that would survive more than a years melt and freeze. Schools. Alliances. Food. Peace.  
  
Cassian couldn’t imagine what to say. To ask for.  
  
But Thesan went on, beginning to sound more like a person and less like a Lord. “We have nothing- nothing saved from the time _before._ But I would lend my power to raise ruins, if that is what Illyria desires.”  
  
Cassian, unable to feel an ounce of shame, shut his eyes. Behind them, the sky wheeled, bright and true.   
  
What lived in the land his gods loved, in greater numbers even than their people: ruins. Half of which had not existed visible and tangible until the new border had been struck, until the gods woke, until Illyria was free.  
  
Crumbled stone and ancient tile, foundations that sprawled through greenery, covering entire valleys.   
  
The bones of Illyria that was- the promise and haunting of the Illyria Cassian wanted to see live.  
  
“When you say, _raise the ruins_ , you mean?”  
  
Thesan bobbed his head, dignity abruptly forgotten. “Alchemy. Transubstantiation on a full scale- what was to what will be. Restorative transformation is my specialty.” He smiled again, realer, _blinding_ , “I could turn your sword back into a falling star, if you’d like to see.”  
  
Unconsciously, Cassian clutched at the pommel of the weapon he’d carried since Hybern fell, hilt graven with curves of devotion, promised marked down to the blade. “You want to turn back history, for an obligation that is more than ten thousand years old? _Why?_ ”  
  
“You think only Illyrian’s care for honor?” Cassian may have been taller, but the weight of Thesan’s shifting, sky-grey eyes leveled them. “It was Night that killed my ancestors. It _cannot_ be history turned back. I cannot restore what was in the buildings, the contents of rooms washed away by time, but I will bring the structures back.”  
  
Cassian wanted to ask- _and what will we owe you? When will you remind us, when will you try to call us to war?  
_  
But beneath his feet, the mountain hummed. He wanted to ask because he was afraid to be wrong. Cassian wanted to _trust,_ wanted to give his people everything they had ever deserved- safe homes beneath and above their sky.  
  
And so the King of Illyria nodded to the High Lord of Dawn, and stone once upon a long lost time carved by Illyrian hands once again crowned the mountains, reached in beauty to touch the   
stars.  
  
Illyria rose, and kept rising.  
  
Remembered.   
  
Reborn. _  
_

_***_   


  
The Night Court preached of many different kinds of darkness held within its power. The star scattered sky for lovers, the dreaming dark of nightmare magic, blackness beyond the space of breath. 

The dark under the mountain, inside the Obsidian City, was older than time, untouched by any High Lord.   
  
Nesta had heard its resentful croon before, heart racing as it recognized her. Even rendered claustrophobic with it’s poisoned population, the mountain and its hewn heart had known her.  
  
Emptied, the glorious madness of the city was a peaceful black. Light hid dawn pink and gold in the curves of carved monsters, settled about her shoulders and tangled in Nesta’s unbound hair, throwing back purple twilight in the primal quiet.  
  
It was the first clue.  
  
Beneath the city, through Nesta’s door of gold and bone, lay a library.  
  
And beneath the library, in the dust of centuries, sat the story of Northern conquest.  
  
The Library might have pulled Nesta to the books- tales lost, language hidden, a trove fearful enough she could only guess Kier, in his whole vainglorious wicked life, had been unable to discern the words, or Rhysand would have long been dead- but it was the darkness, _the death,_ that led Nesta deeper beneath the mountain.   
  
In the heart of ancient Night’s dangerous kingdom, lay all that remained of the Court of Dusk. 

And beyond that, trophies of Illyria.  
  
A tunnel, a tower- an impossible cathedral whose entire high and narrow scope was inset with wings. Articulated so carefully, the awe-inspiring span they would have made extending from proud Illyrian shoulders preserved to wrap up the walls, set in black stone so polished it seemed to weep, even now.  
  
Nesta made it three steps before she retched.  
  
But she kept moving, breathing in horror, until she could see up the center of the tunnel, the vaulted top of the curving ceiling. It would have looked like crenelation to her mortal eyes, hanging so high above, but Nesta knew what it was

Skulls. Hundreds, bound so closely together they barely resembled remains, a haunting moon in this blackest airless sky.   
  
She’d ripped the first of the bones she could reach from the wall when a voice rose from the dark.   
  
“Will you take them home?”  
  
The Carver tilted his head. Soft. _Curious_. Nesta had known he was there- _sister_ , he’d called her. Whatever the providence, blood or might, his very presence had always felt like recognition. On the same battlefield, kinship.  
  
She couldn’t _explain_ the instinct, but Nesta had accepted it.   
  
Who was she to call him _monster?_ Magic older than the seas had made her as she was, eternity stolen and locked in her limbs. Nesta could breathe death and create life, how could she deny someone who could do the same?  
  
Forcefully, Nesta stilled her shaking hands as she turned, chin held high. “They don’t belong here.”  
  
“No,” He sighed, black eyes drifting to the ceiling. He looked different to every mortal, but to Nesta and Elain, he was this: tall and dark-haired, delicate bones an echo of Nesta’s cutting cheeks, pallor a sunless twin of Elain’s complexion.   
  
Someday, Nesta would ask if it was his real face.  
  
“They never did,” He sighed again, turned the impossibly warm, oil-slick gaze on her, “This was their first attempt to imprison me, you know.”  
 _  
Their_ \- Rhysand’s cursed, _bastard_ ancestors, who’d apparently thought it was fine to bleed to death to ward in their precious city of starlit innocents, but also indulged in conquest with a savage sentimentalism. Rooms of bone, banners of fallen kingdoms- did anyone alive remember Dusk? Was there even a single Illyrian left who was fluent in the language of their ancestors?  
  
“They didn’t understand what you were,” Nesta managed, fury a rising pitch, screaming in her ears.  
  
Like he could hear it- maybe he could, the Carver smiled, a purely wicked baring of teeth. “Not in the least. But then, neither did I. Neither did Hybern, thinking he could escape you.”  
  
Despite herself- _despite the fact that Nesta wanted to rip down the mountain with her bare hands_ \- a flicker of warmth filled her in reply. “I had help.”  
  
Eye crinkling, he laughed. 

“A precious thing, a sister good with a knife.” Overgrown hair falling against his neck, the Carver looked again to the gruesome dome. “You’d have help now, but alas,” Pale, ink- smudged palms spread, he shook his hands at Nesta in a facsimile of cheer, “They had just enough brains to ensure I couldn’t touch the bone.”  
  
Unable to contain a noise that said all Nesta thought about the _brains_ of Rhysand and all his ilk, she turned back to the wall.   
  
Instead of leaving, or interpreting her stiff shoulders for dismissal as someone who’d known her for all of two conversations might, the Carver sat down. Sprawled on the floor with careless grace, a chisel tucked in his belt and ink on his hands, he was vibrantly, startlingly alive.  
  
“Nesta,” He said, quietly, after a moment, “Your friend would help you if you asked.”  
  
There was bone dust on her hands- wing bones were delicate things to start with, but these had lain waiting for thousands of years. She had to get them off the wall, out of this dark, airless place. Illyrians burned their dead, sent them back to the sky, this was- this was-  
  
Nesta forced herself to swallow around the lump in her throat. “My friend?”  
  
“The one made of dark,” The Carver answered, fast, like he’d been waiting for her to speak. “The one the shadows sing for.”  
 _  
If you ever need a way out,_ Azriel had promised. He also smiled so brightly now that Lucien sometimes set the air on fire by accident, shadows beneath his eyes gone under the Day Court sun.   
  
He didn’t need to see the gruesome history of the Court he’d served.  
  
Nesta breathed out her nose and went back to work. “They made a tower of bones to lock in the _Bone Carver_?”  
  
He laughed, golden and young. “Oh, haven’t you heard? I’m a monster, they thought it suited me.”  
  
Beneath Nesta’s furious hands, no amount of care stopped the underformed scapula of a child- _a child, three? Five? Old as Cassian taken from his mother. Too young to even fly alone_ \- from crumbling to rough dust.   
  
Nesta swore, and mounded fragmented decay in the pile growing at her feet.  
  
“Sister.”  
  
Staring uncomprehending at the tiny tool held out to her, Nesta heard herself snap. “I’m not going to call you brother.”

“Call me whatever you like,” He said, shrugging but not retracting the offering. “It’s not as though Carver is my name either. The chisel will do what your hands cannot, I will speak to the stone.”  
  
Numbly, swallowing down the acidic anger, Nesta took it.  
  
Absorbed the sheer age of the object- how it felt in her hand like being in the presence of a Lord of Prythian- long-dreaming power contained in the ordinary blade, chipped and scuffed, the only evidence of long ago fine providence the jade inlay of the handle, made delicate with clouds.  
  
It might as well been a piece of his body, a slice of the Bone Carver’s soul, offered to do what must be done.  
  
Nesta met his gaze. “Under Night Court law, all Illyrians born of warrior bloodlines or with equitable power _belong_ to the Legions. They may be taken from the their parents any time, just as their parents themselves might be called to fight. The standard age to glean noble children is twelve. Bastards are culled at four.”  
  
The only difference between the Bone Carver’s pupils and his iris was _shine_ \- a strange, living iridescence, stars scattered in a fathomless sky. Elain’s eyes looked nearly as dark, after sundown.  
  
Those stars faded.   
  
“Would you like me to kill him?” The Carver offered, soft, nearly sweet. “Finish the work of ending the bloodline?”  
  
The oldest death god that still walked the world, who called her sister and whose overgrown black hair had Elain’s cloudy curls. Not just a peer in magic and might- something more, familiarity that hurt as much as it was a comfort.   
  
There was not a man alive in her mortal life Nesta would have called reliable. Responsible. Worthy indeed of the air they breathed.   
  
She might still prefer not to rely on anyone but herself, but Nesta could feel in her bones, the Carver would do as she asked, and no more. Knew down to the magic in her veins that he could do nothing else.  
  
The God of Truth.  
  
Nesta was Cauldron’s heir, and the Librarian besides. Stories belonged to her, the last song the dead left behind to benefit the living. But what else did a person take into oblivion but those final, inexorable truths of their being?  
  
Nesta had, in the water that was not water, in the death when they did not drown.  
  
Kinship, and he felt it too, going on, softer still. _Dangerous_. “He hurt you,” The Carver whispered. “Wanted to use you, wanted you afraid.”  
  
Nesta raised her chin. _“True flame,”_ She quoted. “You think _Rhysand_ could win? I hate that bastard, but Feyre can have him and his whole _reduced kingdom._ ”  
  
Proving her utterly unfounded intuition, he laughed. “And may you burn evermore. His ancestors were more of a challenge.”  
  
The City of Starlight was twelve thousand years old, founded somewhere in the middle of the messy dynastic shift between the Lords of Truth and Lords of Nightmare to rule as the highest House of Night. Amen’s earliest written record in the Prison was some twenty thousand years old- but didn’t Rhysand told her sister the Bone Carver was the _first_ prisoner?  
  
Nesta turned back to bones.  
  
“Rhysand claims the title of most powerful High Lord in history.”  
  
From flat on the ground, sprawl extended until his booted feet were nearly in her space, the Carver snorted. “In _remembered_ history. In recording written by the North’s hegemonic, grasping, bloody hands.”  
  
The chisel sliced through stone like a knife in hot butter, magic humming in her hand. The scythe had felt this way, when she’d passed it to Elain- the power Nesta had poured into it living in the metal, a heart so much as an Illyrian sword outstretched.   
  
Trust given easily, even after years in Day, was unfamiliar enough to _ache._  
  
“How many of those grasping ancestors did you kill, exactly?”  
  
A smile, sharp as her own, cut through the dark.  
  
“Every single one who lived of an age to be happy.”  
 _  
Every single one_ \- officials high enough in the Court- under Rhysand, that authority consolidated solely to his closest friends- had long written of the Carver as a monster. The Library hummed with giddy delight at his presence, but could find for Nesta only the vaguest references outside the North.

_Sin Eater. Bone Carver. Prison keeper.  
_  
A god who could not lie but should never, ever, be trusted.  
  
Nesta should have guessed, it being the Night Court, that the animosity was absolutely personal.  
  
He could have been from the settling, Prythian’s years before Courts. Could have been born before rebirth to one of the territories Night swallowed whole, their banners preserved stained in blood in a room above their heads. 

If Dusk was real once, could the setting and rising sun not be the same? Dawn for all it’s ingenuity and tradition was the last Court founded, Nesta knew. Land shaped by the dreaming temperament of a High Lord into a country of gold-pink stone and ferocious alchemy, gardens and peace that lived for memory.  
  
Under Nesta’s hands, the wall rippled like water, stone bringing more and more bones into her reach. Layered more than one wingspread deep, an underground tower not clad in skeletons, but made from them.   
  
Still flat on the floor behind her, the Carver made a soft sound. “It is more than a Legion. You look at them and see the one you love, no?”  
 _  
Do not lie to the truth-telling god,_ the books had said. Nesta Archeron had never had time for lies to begin with.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Dawn, Dusk, Illyria- she didn’t think Cassian’s name in this airless tomb. Instead, Nesta was thinking about where the Bone Carver got those features. More her brother in form than Elain had looked, when they were young.   
_  
Where had he come from,_ that he’d grown godly to hunt the Lords of Night?  
  
As though he could sense her thoughts, the Bone Carver sighed. “I see failure. A eon of debt.” He paused, listening to the echo of bone clanking softly on bone, even Nesta’s gentleness unable to stop sound in this carrion space. “And much work to do. Would you like a story, while your hands are busy?”  
  
The danger had returned to his voice.  
  
In the Library, in a room where the sun had never shone, ink rained down on ivory floors. Constant and even as a sleepy autumn shower, puddles that flowed in continuum to form the characters of a poem.  
  
Not moving through channels- the weeping color knew the words, even after centuries. The stokes of ink told of love- long lost, long mourned, long lived. 

“If the story is true, the Library will never forget it.”  
  
“ _Queen of knowledge_ ,” The Carver crooned, “Who is that warning for? Would you like to know what came before? I can tell you the providence of every banner, every drop of blood. Would you like to know their names?”  
  
The wall undulated, death upon death beneath her hands. Under her fingertips, the chisel had a heartbeat, alive and insensate in one.   
  
Nesta tilted her head. “Why bone?”  
Low from his throat, a noise emerged that could only have been called approving. “Why books? Death is the last story, bones most holy stone.” He sucked in an audible breath, Nesta’s finely attuned senses picking up everything from the half laugh in his voice to the way space seemed to _shudder_ as the Carver’s spine pressed flat to stone. “I drowned too, you know.”  
  
And Nesta- Nesta had to stop chiseling away at the charnel hall.   
  
She spoke only of their deaths to Elain- Helion had been a student of the Cauldron’s potential for centuries before she’d even been born, much less reborn. Helion was _safe_ from her nightmares. He didn’t need to know, as Elain had from her own magic, as Nesta had learned from sirens and naiads who called her _elder.  
_  
Time is an ocean, and all eternity flows through it like so much water.   
  
The sister’s had died before they drowned. 

And the drowning had lasted forever.

But could she call it that? They died, they drowned, they woke, they walked free.   
  
“Not in the Cauldron.”  
  
He hummed. The note sang upward, carried in darkness until hairs rose on the back of Nesta’s neck. A call- response was alive beneath her skin, the next three ghostly notes a melody she’d know deaf and dreaming.   
  
It spilled from Nesta’s throat without her consent, clear and high. 

A trill to wake the dead.  
  
She spun, _furious_ , in time for the Carver to fling himself upright. Nesta’s hands were shaking, almost as fast as the rise and fall of his chest. The only gratification- _because Nesta didn’t understand, there was still so much she didn’t know-_ was that he looked even more startled than she was.  
  
Youthful in his shock, black eyes blazing.  
  
“I-“, He sounded _impossibly_ normal, “My apologies. I underestimated- truly, you are an old and wondrous thing in new bones, Nesta Archeron.” Nesta fought the automatic bitter taste in her mouth, the urge to snap, _apologies are worthless._ Instead, she watched him tug on a handful of black curls, held in place by recognizable uncertainty crossing features the same way it hatefully did her own. “I know of your making. Allow me equivalence to tell you of my own.” _  
_  
Spine straight, shoulders thrown forcefully back, Nesta pointedly loosened her grip on the chisel and turned away once more. Began to work.  
  
He understood.

“It was blood.” Entrancing as another song, his voice wound its way through shadow and years. “When Prythian was young, magic was everywhere. Pockets of power forming inconceivable places- our rivers held stories, we learned longing from the wind. It was the age of the very first alchemists, when anything was possible. We wanted to make beautiful things, _we wanted to learn_ \- but nothing we knew about magic mattered when they came.”  
  
In the held breath of silence, Nesta spoke. Softly. Haltingly. “When Night- when Night came for Dusk?”  
  
The Carver sighed. He looked young as her- sounded even younger- but that exhale held every single loss of more years than could be counted.  
  
“We called it the _cataclysm_.” Settled back on the floor, his skull hit the stone floor unflinching. Audibly. “But it was a massacre. They thought there were no survivors- burned from Perfect Brightness to Eternal Spring, our palaces and our people. It wasn’t just for power- it was to destroy whatever they couldn’t understand.”  


“But there _were_ survivors.”  


Nesta was glad not to see his face at the sound he made- ruinous dark, so private it felt as though Nesta shouldn’t be in the room. “Oh sister, I did not _survive._ But you are right, and I think you’re already guessed how.”  


Careful, she lowered one last fractured wing to the floor and turned.   


“Dawn,” Nesta said without flinching, and the Bone Carver’s eyes fell shut. The banners in that room- _that room she was going to rip apart_ \- the swirling clouds and silvered stars, pink and blue. The flag of Dawn, inverted, a dozen more stars left to gleam in an untroubled sky. 

“Someone from Dusk escaped to found Dawn. Maybe Rhysand’s ancestors were as stupid as he is- _maybe_ \- maybe the refugees had help from further North.” His inclined head brought her words faster, fury that had no where to go. _Debt._ “But you _died, and you weren’t”-  
_   
“Ah, but it wasn’t that simple.”  
  
He patted the floor with an outstretched palm. Waited to speak until Nesta sank graceless down to sit beside him, limbs locked in anger. “Let us go backwards. Once there was a boy, born across the seas.”  
  
Twisting, he looked blindly at Nesta. It took several beats to guess what exactly he wanted, huffing a sigh. “The boy grew up,” Nesta could guess- _Nesta knew what made gods,_ “And fell in love.”

“He fell in love with a Court he chose and the craft of his hands it valued. He fell in love with a woman to whom he could offer nothing but himself- and she accepted anyway.” The Carver shook his head, violet shadows in his hair, lavender hollow over his closed eyes. “The last light before night- _Dusk,_ every inch of Dusk was worth embracing, but I loved her High Lady most of all."  


Between one breath and the next a hair pin appeared in his hand. Twirled between fingertips, vague in the dark, but Nesta didn’t need light to see. Jade- precious and pale as the chisels inlaid handle.  


“I built this city for her. _Moonlight beneath the mountain,_ it was called. A ribcage carved to harbor a heart- perfection is meant to be flawed, you know? We poured gold through the cracks, but she liked best that every bit was just a little monstrous. She _was_ perfect, her only flaw was me."  


For just a second, less than a moment, Nesta would swear there was light. A blaze in the dark, sunset violet and horizon pink as the air filled with the long lost scent of jasmine. Quickly as it came, the sick iron tang of carnage overwhelmed it.  


Briefly, Nesta allowed her nails to bite into her palms. Allowed herself to feel exactly, _precisely,_ how much she hated Rhysand. “They killed her. And then they killed you.”  


“ _Thought they killed me_ ,” It was a whisper. “Threw me down among the bodies in the river. My lungs were full of blood, my bones were broken, but _nothing mattered but vengeance._ Prythian heard me. Power that had never known death, waiting in the bones of the world. I stole it."  


Nesta’s last coherent moments between mortality and forever: a death-promise, a battle, _the choice that she’d make this a choice,_ and taking all there was to take.  


A lightless star in his hand, the hairpin spun so fast it blurred.  


“She died, and I waited.”  


Down to the second, Nesta had known when Cassian yielded his body to the rage of his people. It had been Cassian- _utterly Cassian, fury and love, might that shook the world-_ but it had also been thousands dead, a dozen generations, Cassian’s every prayer answered all at once as his gods awoke and loved him.  


She’d known, when Rhysand stopped his heart.  


Held in a death grip, falling to earth, the High Lord hadn’t fought. He’d _pushed_. Recognized, somehow, the open channel between Cassian- _her Cassian_ \- and those ancient, raging things. The dissonance between ungovernable power and not impermeable body. Between the might of the sky and Illyrian blood that harbored only personal power.

Rhysand had seen it, and pushed- slammed the power of Lordship, every dark night and unfathomable nightmare beneath his skin.   


Until Cassian, a cup overflowing already, could hold it no longer.  


Nesta would never let him burn out.  


In another life, a world so slightly altered, Nesta would have been there. In a different future already seen, Rhysand didn’t exist in enough pieces to be carried back to her sister, after he’d laid a hand on Cassian.  


“The High Lord had three sons, and I waited for them to want. To _have._ ” He sighed, and the scent of blood returned. Not memory so vital it flooded the air, a pinprick as the Carver held what Nesta could only imagine was the last piece of the woman he’d loved so tightly that it pierced his skin. “And then I struck. I thought I might do it eight hundred times, kill for each acre of the palaces and gardens burnt. She’d cared for them so.”  


Nesta wanted to ask, _how many? How did you control yourself? How did you know what you’d become?  
_

Instead, chisel bruising clouds into her skin, she said, “What was her name?”  
  
She heard rather than saw the moment the pin bit deeper, wounding point driven straight through to delicate metacarpal. Metal on bone was not a noise Nesta had ever been able to forget.  
  
“What is the secret weapon of the Lords of Night? What can he do that he pretends he does not? What did he give your sister?”  
  
A throne she barely understood. A marriage she was decades too young in immortality and maturity to handle. Endless riches, absolute royalty. Power of Night, power of-

Nesta moved without thinking, an iron grip on the hand the Carver seemed to be trying to stab clean through, not a thought in her mind that she shouldn’t touch a mourning god. “ _Daemati.”_ She hissed, fingertips biting into his wrist. “Every few generations like clockwork. They- _they took her name from you?”_

The pin disappeared.  
  
Through the dark, the Carver was smiling again, a sad, ancient thing. “It was my first punishment. Took several generations after I broke out of here and slaughtered half the High Court before an advisor suggested they find her bones. Then, came the Prison.”  
  
Elain had told Nesta and Cassian both the same thing about Rhysand, about war: _don’t let him keep where your heart lives.  
_  
Sick, _she was going to be sick,_ Nesta fumbled blind until she held the Carver’s hand in hers.

“You built it?”  
  
He shook his head. “Oh, _they_ built it. The Lords of Truth were better than you can imagine at making enemies. They needed me to wake it- to carve it to life, they needed it sentient enough to keep us contained.” He’d delivered the whole terrible tale with his eyes closed, but now they flickered open, gleaming starless sky. “I made their tomb. I carved a _world-_ but they couldn’t take her from me. I dreamt her face so often every prisoner knew it. We all longed for freedom but _my love_ , my love was the last exaltation that stone could ever remember.”

Twisting to look up at Nesta, she knew with sudden, abiding horror what he was about to say. “I dreamt her face for thousands of years, until a monster walked out of my prison wearing it.”  
  
Amren.   
  
Amren, who’d surrendered holy grace to take the shape of a faery body- _one she’d known, one she’d admired_ \- who wore an unmistakable Dawn Court face.   
  
“I don’t blame her,” The Carver was saying, forcefully light, thumb running over Nesta’s knuckles like he was the one comforting her, “The world deserves to have such beauty again.”  
 _  
“She”_ -  
  
“No.” He squeezed her hand. “No, Amren is not her. She will never be, who am I to begrudge her freedom? We shared a cage.”  
  
Blood in the air, bone dust on her dress, righteous anger hot beneath her skin- Nesta should have been on the verge of shaking apart. A year ago, she would have been. Now- now she understood the blood, would save the bone- now, she felt nothing but the monstrous comfort of sharing space with a being exactly like her, magic unfathomable and ancient singing between their voices. 

He couldn’t escape the prison as Amren had. The Bone Carver could not be anything but what he was. 

Terrifying. Exactly right.  
  
“How,” Nesta asked, softly, “Did you make yourself keep going?”

Gentleness so complete her body revolted at it, the Bone Carver wrapped his other hand over hers, callouses equally jarring normalcy. “How did you raise the mountains? Awake the slumbering soul of a place?”  
  
This man’s goal had been to kill _eight hundred generations,_ and Nesta felt nothing but safe. An impossible thing, a monster- but couldn’t she be one too? For what mattered? Was there not a murky future in which Nesta didn’t prevent Cassian’s death so much as wrenched him back after the fact, raised him from the wheeling sky to stand with her between the bleeding mountains and an army?

A Cassian who chose too late- a Nesta only Elain had seen, power made screaming manifest.   
  
It was better for the Illyrians to have their owed victory. And Nesta- Nesta on that field would have been a different creature than she wanted to be. There would have been no Night Court _left_.   
  
“Balance,” She said eventually, the gods weight of a word in her mouth. “Prythian is remembering what it used to be.”  
  
Prythian was already waking up, slow as any ancient thing, since the very day Feyre was foolish enough to nearly drown to touch the Book.  
  
He hummed, no magic to the sound that remained haunting. “We _are_ what it used to be. I did not sleep, as Illyria did, but I dreamt, Nesta Archeron. I let Hybern destroy my body to ensure my vow broke, and woke luckily enough to find I was alone no longer. I am…glad, to have sisters again.”  
  
The absurd name of Rhysand’s divided, incompetent governing Court, five people unreservedly in charge of a population three times the size of Day: the Court of Dreams. 

_The Dreamers_ , who’d fight for a better world.   
  
A lie as it was all lies, but they’d lived up to this- awakened every dream and nightmare, every impossible thing bound from before a time High Fae believed in the absolution of their supremacy. Nesta would not let them be driven back to restful imprisonment.  
  
Balance: between life and death inside her. Between rage and love, between the new age coming and the wrongs of the last set to right.  
  
Nesta raised her head. “I’ve never had a brother.” Brothers-in-law, as they currently stood, did not count in the slightest to the Archeron sisters. Ysandr, Nesta _also_ knew, was going to change that soon. “You’ll protect Elain?”  
  
He laughed. “With twenty thousand years of tricks, bright flame. And you as well.”  
  
Squeezing his hand before freeing herself, Nesta met the Carvers gaze. “Would you teach me alchemy?”  
  
Surprise bloomed on his smiling face, equal parts delight and wonder.   
  
But Nesta didn’t get to hear his reply. In a boom that was silent- _force not noise, raw power_ \- living blackness filled the room, and Nesta was snatched up off the ground against a chest just familiar enough she didn’t stop the heart beating within it.  
  
Azriel’s face, the only thing visible in the maelstrom, was _furious._

Beautiful- _out of control_ \- shadow no longer ghosting about him so much as billowing out from his very skin. Nesta had the out of body thought _this is what Lucien sees_ , before Azriel carefully set her down. “Run. _Run now_.”  
 _  
“Azriel_ ”-  
  
“ _Do you know what is down here?”_ He hissed, incised and alarmingly handsome. “We need to get out. Now.”  
  
Surreality complete, the Bone Carver chose that moment to cut through Azriel’s shadowed power. Froze it, bent it, darkness shaped into a loving pillar that he rested both elbows atop and leaned, grinning.  
  
“We haven’t even been introduced, Shadowsinger.”  
  
Azriel tried and failed to winnow them both away.  
  
“ _Azriel,_ ” Nesta hissed again, cursing the protective instincts that seemed to drive every Illyrian alive. “Stop.”  
  
Whatever he heard in her voice or outside it, Azriel finally looked down at Nesta. Like the Bone Carver wasn’t there, ducked his head closer to murmur, “I felt the _wards._ Came as fast as I- Nesta, you’re okay?”

Angry enough Nesta could taste it, thick like cloves on her tongue, Lucien’s incendiary might woven all the way through. A horror. Azriel, who’d once tried to face an army alone for Elain. Who’d come to fight a _god_ , for her.

“I’m _fine_.”  
  
It was the truth, which Azriel would hear, which couldn’t be denied, but still a shadow whispered for her- _he can look like anyone, anyone, don’t trust your face on his face, don’t trust the Sin Eater. Nesta, I won’t let him hurt you-  
_  
“Give her back her face, _”_ Azriel _growled,_ abundantly ready to get in a knife fight with a god over the providence of their shared cheekbones, Truthteller at the ready.

Nesta only had time to grab his arm before the Carver’s grin had widened dangerously, crooked joy showcasing a single dimple. “I do prefer my name. Erebus, not Sin eater.”  
  
A name sought for fifteen thousand years, lost to time and erased. Did Dawn know it all along, or was there only Nesta now? Her and hers, keepers and confidants of man who wasn’t supposed to exist.   
  
Erebus dropped the insouciant lean and strode forward, one hand outstretched. “Read me, little shadow, before my darling sister decides to physically restraint us both. You visited me in prison, where the dark could not live. The shadows are yours now.”  
  
Azriel didn’t answer.  
  
One minute they stood facing each other, eerily still, utterly silent, wreathed in blackness beyond the sky and the next, that darkness swallowed Erebus whole.  
  
Nesta looked at Azriel, and Az looked back. Alive and one with this ancient dark- Nesta might have remarked on it, if he didn’t also look like he might start a brawl with a god, equal parts unmoored and furious.  
  
Instead of speaking, Azriel raised his brows.   
  
The look said _what the fuck_ with such searing condemnation Nesta could practically hear the gravel syllables.   
  
Rhysand, Feyre- they’d described an anger in Azriel that nothing could touch, ice cold. Maybe it was Lucien melting him, perhaps, as they _so often were,_ they’d simply seen wrong- but there was nothing cold about this. Azriel smelled like danger and looked like he wanted to burn down the world, like the axis of everything had tilted out of control.   
  
Nesta had frankly, never found him more relatable.  
  
She crossed her arms in reply, the silence stretching and warping around them.   
  
Finally, Azriel said, “That’s his real name.”  
  
“And his real face.”  
  
A point to her, Azriel’s mouth twitched. “Elain has been writing to him.” The tilt of his head told her he’d just learned this from shadow, not observation. “He _loves_ you.”  
  
What Nesta had learned over a year in Day with Lucien and Azriel as neighbors: that Lucien absolutely could and would winnow to the roof of her tower to steal flowers for his husband, knock on her windows to trade freshly made coffee for pomegranates despite the dawn hour.  
  
That Azriel turned just as red as their sticky sweetness with enough laughter.  
  
For all that he was other as she, different and apart as the wretched misery of Nesta’s own time in the Illyrian north, Azriel’s heart was cloudless mountain sky. 

Illyrian to the bone in the best ways that mattered- he would kill to protect those who needed it, valued freedom and choice more than anything, and knew _love_ \- love was what mattered most.  
 _  
Utterly frustrated_ , but those words were a surrender.  
  
Out of the swirling black came Erebus, straightened to his full, prodigious height.

“I have no quarrel with you, shadowsinger,” he said, words echoing through the cathedral prison, “But I am the first and she is the last, fate willing. We are born of the same magic more than our long dead mothers- I will not be kept from my sister’s any more than you’d be caged away from your chosen brother.”   
  
Azriel didn’t move, didn’t even blink.  
  
Like that tenuous control was an answer, the Bone Carver- _Erebus_ , _his real name, his real outrageous face_ \- nodded. Slunk to Nesta’s side to loop a corded, lanky arm loose around her shoulders.   
  
“I like him,” He purred.   
  
Nesta jabbed the chisel, still clutched in her hand, straight into the older gods ribs. Escaped that gentle arm and _annoyingly_ lowered head with an easy sidestep, skirt drifting serenely around her but for the bone shards caught through it.   
  
Azriel’s dark eyes followed. Whole body strung with violent tension as Nesta handed back over the chisel and failed to dodge in time Erebus swooping down with a grin to leave a smacking kiss on top of her head.  
  
Suddenly as he’d arrived, the Bone Carver stepped backwards into nowhere and was gone.  
  
In his absence, light lingered behind. Twilit purple entangled burning pink, a gold that hung caught on the horrific, half torn apart walls. The glow of the setting sun- Nesta wondered distantly, had he been Lord? Had he married her? Or did memory simply live so strong in this place made by his hands for her, that the very air remembered?  
  
Nesta waited in silence as one by visible one, Azriel’s fingers relaxed on the hilt of Truthteller.  
  
More than a dozen heartbeats later, shadow spooled back beneath his skin, Azriel raised his face to the sunset light. “He didn’t kill any of these people. Night- _Night killed them and built with their bodies.”_ He shook his head, throat bobbing.“ _Rhys killed Cassian.”  
_   
Anger. Pure, unadulterated rage.  
  
Dangerous ignition that Nesta could look and see the same demand for blood, for rightness, _for merciless destruction-_ human, the feeling had been bigger than her body. Fae, it was an ocean without end.   
  
Ignored but never forgotten, strung taut enough to wound, a long link of thread was burning beneath her ribs.  
  
Fireflies in the halflight, sparks escaped straight from Nesta’s fingertips into the air. “Azriel.” She waited for him to look, for the ever so slight telling incline of his chin that said Azriel was _listening._

_“_ The bones need to go _home._ But everything else,” It was a sneer- the sentence Nesta didn’t even need to finish as Azriel sank both his hands into the wall and pulled.  
 _  
Shadowsinger_ \- born of stone and darkness, Azriel’s natural element as much as the sky itself.  
  
Rage was clarity, anger was magic- and within it, straight from her burning heart came the notes as Nesta sang the Bone Carvers song, called death to her hands, and sent far away innocent bones to where the wind would welcome them.   
  
She sang and kept singing, wordless notes that pierced the air. How old were the songs Bone Carver knew? How long had death slumbered behind iron walls before Nesta sank in her teeth? What could she call from the dark?  
 _  
His heart had stopped.  
_  
Fire filled Nesta.She wanted Rhysand dead, she wanted every monolithic inch of this prison ground to dust, _she wanted to remake the world.  
_   
And then the thunder started.  
  
No air in this place, no deluge to be found underground- the storm boomed beneath their feet. Nesta could feel the beat in her entire body, strong as a heart she knew well as her own. Swore she could hear Erebus’s laugh wild in her ears, before Azriel spoke, shadows escaping with the words.  
  
“ _They hear you,_ ” He growled, a wall tumbling down around them. Azriel had torn weeping obsidian free like Nesta might a piece of paper. “ _All mountains remember each other.”  
_  
And then, in a cloud of exploding darkness, Azriel brought down the dome.  
  
Nesta opened her eyes to a thousand gleaming blades of black. Hungry and sharp, but none so wild as the gutted, molten expression on Azriel’s normally controlled face. A hands breath away from Nesta, chest rising and falling, depositing wounding dust that carried haunted pink light as it fell.   
  
“Morrigan came after us.” Azriel said after a long moment.  
  
The beat beneath their feet had quieted, but Nesta could still feel it, steady. Ready- alive and hungry.  
  
“Us,” Nesta asked, looking up, “The Illyrian army? Or _us,_ she showed up to fuck with you and Cassian?”  
  
Pulling free shards that left his fingertips bleeding and healing from his hair, Azriel grinned, savagely handsome. His voice could have melted the rock. “She asked us to come _home. To come home, with her._ To pass along that Feyre was taking care of Elain and Lucien’s house.”  
  
After all this time, Nesta did still love Feyre. Her foolish, cruel, _flawed_ baby sister, who’d been given a crown and a family she didn’t _understand._ Elain was going to poison her rivers.   
  
“Five hundred years,” Azriel growled, more to himself than her.  
  
“We have _forever_ ,” Nesta snarled right back, aggression a shared language she was only now realizing he spoke as fluently as her. “You never have to go back. Did Lucien light her on fire?”

Azriel threw the shard in his hand, the stone exploding in a shower of shining razored edges. He didn’t shield as she did- didn’t bother to do anything more than lick the blood from his mouth as they ricocheted back.   
  
“I told him to save it.” Black eyes found her’s in the tenebrous light, red blood and white teeth flashing.   


“It’s time to march on Autumn.”  


***  


The High Lords wasted no time sending representatives to treat with the newly risen kingdom of the North.  
  
Court Seconds, mostly, which Cassian tried hard not to bristle at. The sworn swords of their territories, because Illyrian’s were _dangerous_. Always warriors, even at peace. Even when only Dawn Court generosity allowed them learn the beautiful stonemasonry of their grandfathers. Worthy of being guarded against even as they sought ways to farm the fertile earth when they’d once only contended with the sky.  
  
But Illyria was a kingdom won in war, and no one would forget that.   
  
Rhysand sent Amren, which Cassian honestly looked forward too, in a room full of strangers where the only other recognizable face was Eris, made newly small in sworn service to his mother.   
  
Helion Spellcleaver sent Nesta Archeron.  


_Or perhaps_ , his panicked, racing brain purred, _she sent herself._   


No warning heralded Nesta’s arrival. Cassian found her in a public hallway, paused in conversation with a handful of red-robed Illyrian priestesses, their ferocious vermillion attire the gift of her younger sister. Saw only the pale flash from the back of her neck as Nesta tossed her head, and ran into the sidewall.  


Hard.  


Years and change.  


He _dreamt_ about that graceful, impossibly long expanse. Woke up out of breath and aching at the very thought of pressing his mouth to the thin skin at the top of Nesta's spine.   


She was even more beautiful than in dreams.  


A hand clapped down on his shoulder at full Illyrian strength. Cassian’s honor guard- the one he’d been able to talk the council down from six on- smirked up at him. “Can you get all the calf eyes out of your system now, or should I tell Lord Azriel to postpone the meeting?”  


Aayla, the very girl Elain had reunited with her mother in the hours before the final battle, hadn’t held onto her awe at Cassian for long.  


Some days, he wished for just a _drop_ of it back.  


“ _Calf eyes? Lala_ , I can keep my shit together.”  


The teenaged Illyrian audibly snickered. “Tell that to the wall, my liege.”  


Cassian drew himself back up straight, and didn’t bother to look at the fine, spiderweb of cracks that framed the shape of his shoulder. Ten feet away, Nesta was _smiling._

He was sure of it-staring at the back if her head, not a single wisp of her perfectly braided hair had escaped, no inch of softness in her immaculate posture- but Cassian knew.  


And he couldn’t _move.  
_

Like a tap at a backdoor only half-heard, the first painful stinging breathe from lungs that had filled with seawater, Cassian _felt_ her decide to turn, the second before she did.   


Once more after nearly two years, Cassian locked on the cool, gray blue gaze of Nesta Archeron.  


He was down the hallway before he could think about it. Bowing before her, like she was the ruler between them. Cassian would do it _right_ this time- how he should have treated her the very day they met, instead of taking Feyre’s word for her safety and comfort, for what this blazing, incredible woman deserved. “Lady.”  


When he looked up, she hadn’t moved.   


Cassian would beg, if that’s what it took. Open his fucking veins like a lord of old if some promise meant she’d speak to him again.   


“Hail, King of Illyria.” Nesta intoned, chin high. It took a second to recognize the barely present thread of amusement, there in her voice. Laughing at him, _withering_ \- but then she went on, quieter. “Cassian.”  


Cassian straightened. Hoped it wasn’t completely obvious he was having trouble stopping himself from gulping down air. Bleeding out on the ground had been easier than this- Nesta Archeron in all her glory. 

All he’d wanted was to be able to stand beside her; she was right in front of him and Cassian couldn’t breathe.  


“Can I talk to you?” Cassian blurted. “Not here,” He immediately corrected, watching the rise of her perfect brows. “Tonight? Maybe? If you’d like. Dinner?”  


The scent of smoke and clack of metal on bone announced the Autumn delegation entering the hallway. Summer, Winter, and Amren shadowed by her salt-haired prince wouldn’t be far behind.  


But Nesta didn’t look away.   


Her eyes flicked meaningfully to Aayla, who was playing proper guard at attention three feet away, twin swords peeking out from behind her wings. “And if I don’t like what you have to say?”  


Cassian’s blood boiled in the second it took him to understand. He couldn’t look away from her- couldn’t- _how had he ruined this so completely? “_ You couldn’t find an Illyrian who’d hurt you.”  


Not because she was Nesta, long absent mate of their king. Because she was _Nesta Archeron_ , goddess who’d risen mountains from earth. The wind sang her name- every alive Illyrian knew it.   


And if Nesta did, indeed, light him on fire without medical necessity this time, Cassian deserved it.  


“Dinner?” Nesta echoed, cool as rainwater.  


She was _faking_ it, Cassian realized all at once. The chilly, perfect composure. The amusement was real- but so was all that undeniable armor, from the flawlessly braided hair to the fretwork of golden metal that wrapped structure over yards of blue silk to make her gown.  


She wanted to laugh at how ridiculous he was being.   


She wanted to _grab him by the fucking throat,_ if those precisely held hands and tracking graze said anything at all. _He could see it_ \- like it had already happened, a full color bloom in back of his mind that started with exquisite aggression and ended in gasping the prayer of her name. 

Cassian’s head actually tilted on pure instinct, an Illyrian neck bared to the most beautiful High Fae fury imaginable.   


Because Nesta had saved his life _again-_ thrice over now, eternities could be spent repaying a single time- and Cassian was still acting like a moron.   


They both knew it. Just like they both knew Cassian did not deserve her attention, had no right at all to ask for her time or words or presence. Like he’d said it aloud, Nesta’s hand spasmed.   
Drew attention to that bracelet that wrapped in a single continual cuff of Day Court style. But it wasn’t the _claim_ of it that stopped his heart- the color was wrong. Just a little less sunshine gold, the delicate filigree so black it seemed to eat up light around it.  
  
An immaculate piece of jewelry made specifically for her tiny wrist. The crown of the High Lord of the Night Court’s Seneschal, hammered down to fit Nesta.  
  
She was _magnificent_.   
  
Cassian reached out before he’d made the choice to move, one knuckle dragging against the back of her hand. Nesta froze. And Cassian- he was fucking this up again, _they were in public,_ he owed a hundred, thousand times more respect than to touch her- reserved, dignified, _beauty personified_ \- in front of strangers.  
  
She could have taken a step back.   
  
No cost to her, an ambassador in her rights. Everything to him.  
  
It felt like a hundred years. Nesta very slowly tilted her hand, and stopped the motion with the precise link of her pointer finger. That was all- but she was _holding onto him_.  
  
“No dinner.”  
  
Cassian blinked. Took in the fact that that parties from other Courts were streaming past them to get to the gathering hall, and Nesta hadn’t so much as tucked the train of her skirt out of the walkway.   
  
“ _What,_ ” Cassian had to swallow, mouth dry and words disused. “Whatever you want.”  
  
“I have a meeting with Autumn at sundown. After that. The second floor has those balcony receiving rooms, no?” It took Cassian a beat too long to nod, but she waited. “Fine.”  
 _  
Fine.  
_  
It would have been better if she’d yelled. If she’d slammed him into the wall by his vulnerable throat in front of all these senior officials. Cassian _wanted_ the pain. The acknowledgement. Another knife in his guts if he got to hear once more how her voice really sounded outside iron control.  
  
Nesta _twitched_ , the only sign a slight increase of pressure on their linked fingertips.   
  
He would have thought he imagined it, if not for the scowl that followed, heat racing up his neck.   
  
“You think _too loudly,”_ Nesta hissed, whisper quiet. A flash of frustrated fury and longing, that Cassian could suddenly feel, _taste,_ and then it was gone.  
  
Nesta dropped his hand and marched after her fellows, head high.   
  
How the meeting went, Cassian couldn’t have said. He didn’t dare let himself think the words; everything beyond them was a static of formality that required little more of him than to stand proud and let others talk. Thank the gods of rock and sky it just the formal introductions.  
  
A spark- he’d felt it, hadn’t he? The morning he watched the sun rise and betrayed everything he knew to become who he was meant to be, the ferocity of Nesta’s heart an inspiration that lent to Cassian exactly the bravery he needed.  
  
He’d tucked Nesta- _failed, perfect, so far beyond him, Nesta-_ so deep inside himself to fight and bleed Cassian had stopped paying attention. But it was _there_.

He’d known it with Morrigan’s bitter, yelling reveal. Before that: the reason why he could die for his people knowing his honor would live, that Nesta Archeron’s name was destined to be his last breath.  
  
A filament of soul- _his and hers_ , _fire and starsteel, in Cassian’s head, in his heart, in her scent, in the taste of the wind over a reborn world-_ there, alive, and Nesta felt it too.   
_  
It hadn’t gone wrong._  
  
It hadn’t-  
  
Nesta left the opening ceremonies arm in arm with Amren, heads tucked close together, gleaming like the sun with the sheer amount of finery worn between them as they exited out into a bright high mountain morning. 

And Cassian- Cassian was thinking that he was going to bribe Aayla into delivering half of his stash of good tea to Nesta’s rooms. 

That she was so beautiful in gold, he wanted to forge a sword of the same color to hang over her spine. That her laugh still sounded _exactly_ the same- clarion like a fucking bell that rang, echoing through his brain. She was glorious- _focused, otherworldly, so fucking strong and comfortable in herself now_ \- Cassian was sure she was armed. _  
_  
Power and beauty distilled, who she’d always been. 

Nesta paused in the open doorway, blinding in the sunlight. Just a few seconds. A tiny glance just over her shoulder, eyes finding Cassian’s instantly.   
  
Not goodbye. Not even hello.  
  
The ghost of a smirk, one brow rising: _I can hear you._

Cassian let out a ragged breath like he’d been stabbed. Words cleaved straight to his heart- the lightening of his gods had contained less heat.

Bribing Aayla took about four seconds, the promise she could escort him all the way to the door of Lord Azriel’s quarters and her _laughing_ at him. Baby Illyrians- gods only knew him and Az had been even worse.  
  
They’d grown and changed irreversibly with age, but Azriel still made the exact same face at him when Cassian walked into his quarters and asked Az to punch him.  
  
“Is this a sex thing? Tell me you’re not asking sex favors from my husband, Cas.” Despite leaving five minutes before Cassian had, Lucien had already shed his formal vestments and was sprawled supine on a couch, visible primarily as a river of gold-intertwined red hair spilling all the way to the floor.

“ _It is not a sex thing,_ ” Cassian hissed, at the same time Azriel laughed and said, “It’s a Cassian losing his shit thing.”  
  
“I am not-“  
  
They ignored him. 

“Ahhh,” Lucien sighed, fangs clicking together as he spoke. “ _Nesta._ ”  
  
“Nesta,” Azriel agreed. Cassian had thought they’d been difficult to be around _before_ the civil war, but they’d returned from Day married and supremely smug about it.

“Who bet she wouldn’t even speak to him?”   
  
“Ysandr was sure that she wouldn’t actually leave the Library,” Az tilted back his head, grinning, “But Aayla was one who insisted on the silent treatment.”  
  
“ _Aayla?_ My honor-guard, Aayla? Treason against the crown, Az.”  
  
Azriel- like they were kids again- flicked Cassian with his wing, unrepentant. “She’s nineteen.” The _and you handpicked her out of the army,_ went unsaid, but Cassian heard it.  
  
“I love that kid,” Lucien laughed, “You ever see her throw knives? We’re naming our firstborn after her.”  
  
Cassian sighed. “Not Elain?”  
  
It could have been the tone, but who was Cassian kidding, lying to himself? It was Azriel reading his mood with the unholy accurate combination of five hundred years of affection and whispering wind. Shadows that loved their singer as much as they loved his husband, passing relevant pieces to Lucien like it was nothing.  
  
“ _No_ ,” Lucien sighed, softening first and twisting upright. “No, you cannot possibly want to talk to me about that. Didn’t you and Rhysand have enough broody rooftop chats about this?”  
  
Cassian swallowed, tried to fight the automatic heat rising up his neck. He’d been blushing like a youth this whole damned morning, very synapses and blood vessels in rebellion with the sight of Nesta. “ _We didn’t_ \- do you think I want to ask about this? I can- _she can hear me.”_

Lucien blinked. “And?”  
  
The wordless swell of Cassian’s joy and _panic_ was interrupted by the undeniable noise of Azriel trying to swallow a laugh. Perfect sync, Lucien’s full mouth twitched, but he gamely kept a steady eye contact with Cassian as he fumbled for words.   
  
“ _And thats-_ it’s like you and Elain. She shouldn’t,” Cassian waved his hands, because there wasn’t words to say _he was so goddamn glad this was happening, he couldn’t control it, hadn’t done anything that could cause it, doubted Nesta really wanted to feel the unremitting blast of his affections._

Brows raised high _,_ Lucien said, “No, _it really isn’t_ anything like Elain and I. What the fuck are you talking about, Cassian?”  
  
Azriel, _the absolute fucker,_ laughed harder. 

The combustible shade of Cassian’s face apparently clued Lucien in, frustration melting into something giddy. Cassian was going to murder them both.  


“You never?…”

Cassian shook his head.  
  
There was something helpless about the way Lucien turned to look at Azriel, nearly blank, utterly diplomatic. Or so it seemed, until Lucien mouthed, _never?_ And Azriel nodded confirmation.  
  
Cassian took the opportunity to crash into one of the stupidly plush armchairs they’d brought from Day, with some wild hope that the cushions might swallow him whole.  
  
It was Azriel's deep, too-amused voice that informed him, “Feyre…might have implied that the two you were together when Nesta was human. Or sometime after.”  


Cassian had spent the time Nesta was human bickering with her, so goddamn terrified that if he even tried to get close he’d hurt her by accident. A human man being thoughtless could have bruised her pale skin without effort- the disparity between Illyrian strength and mortal fragility had been his nightmare.  
  
“You’re kidding.”  
  
Lucien took pity on him. “Feyre has also theorized that Az and I both in love with Elain. Not to mention _the Morrigan._ ”  
  
Cassian said several words that did not befit a king.  
  
Feyre’s meddling like a younger sibling got less and less affectionate in retrospect. She hadn’t learned the High Fae gift of subtly yet- at Rhysand’s side, perhaps she never would. _Theorized_ was a good word; kinder than, _gossiped about to literally our entire family.  
_   
If Feyre thought something, everyone knew it.In another life, Cassian would have been inclined to lock her in a room with Aayla and collect enormous bets off Rhysand when it was the young Illyrian who swaggered out undamaged.   
_  
Bright merciful skies._

“Cassian,” Lucien drawled, “The bond is you. Her. It’s made of _you. Sex doesn’t matter._ You love her?”

Cassian raised his head out of his hands to glare, and Lucien winced. “You’re saying she could always hear me. Even though neither of us are daemati?”  
  
“You don’t need to be,” Lucien huffed. “I can always reach Elain. We love each other, and we didn’t implode to spend four years separated. But the bond is us. So it’s platonic, because that’s how we see each other. You and Nesta are not-“ At Cassians open mouth he held up a hand, “I’ll remind you I met you when your _entire relationship_ was trying to get her to yell at you over breakfast pastries while you secretly assured the table always held her favorites.”  
  
Azriel, sliding to sit beside his husband, laughed again.  
  
Absolutely not thinking about the flushed color Nesta’s cheekbones mottled in pure annoyance, Cassian managed to say, “So, you don’t know.”  
  
Gold on gold as raindrops on a metal roof, Lucien’s braided hair chimed as he settled back against Azriel. “Of course _I don’t know_.You don’t either, if you two were never together. “ _  
_  
Four years. It had been two- she’d saved him, set him aflame, altered the course of his entire life. Together was the most insufficient word Cassian could imagine: he was Nesta’s, body and soul. She was the hearth fire his whole lonely life had longed for.   
_  
A fucking goddess- a-  
_   
So close to Lucien his black gaze was reflecting back light, Az marshaled himself to smirk at Cassian. “The title you’re looking for is Librarian. The Sword of the Ten Thousand, Blade of the Setting Sun.”

Nesta Archeron, who’d found her place in the world. Cassian had his people, these mountains, the speaking wind- he didn’t resent it. He _appreciated_ it, what Nesta deserved.   
  
More than that, a chance to meet on equal footing.  
  
He appreciated it about as much as he appreciated _Blade of the Setting Sun._ Too fully, perhaps, from the laugh stealing back onto Azriel’s face. Cassian couldn’t ever be pissed, knew he’d be carrying his shredded dignity out of their rooms with both hands.  
  
So he let himself ask, blood rushing in his ears. “Nesta learned to _fight?_ ”  
  
Azriel _wheezed.  
  
“_Nope _,”_ Lucien sang, fanged smile saying, _Cassian, you dumbass, Cassian, who do you think you’re talking about._ “She didn’t have to. Lit a forest on fire the first time it happened. Which should tell you she’s been paying a lot more attention to this than you.”  
  
Illyrians spoke of the bond like this- not two made one, one, who had been made two. Nesta’s power, Cassian’s instincts. _Gods damn and burn him. “_ Was she…was she okay? _”  
  
“Cas.” _Azriel laughed the word, propped his chin on top of Lucien’s head to speak. “She kicked Helion’s ass and then they rolled around in the dirt cackling.”  
  
In Cassian’s defense, Azriel was his family. He’d loved him, in one form or another, his entire life. Lucien was a shit, but he absolutely came through when it mattered, and he was Azriel’s _husband._ If Cassian couldn’t lose his mind in front of them, where could he?  
  
That was what Cassian told himself, at least, as he gave into the overwhelming urge to bury his face in his hands with a groan.  
 _  
Rolled around in the dirt-  
_   
Blind, the scent of Nesta’s touch still lingering on his right hand, Cassian listened to Lucien breathing a long sigh out his nose. “Does _no one_ in the Night Court talk about the fact that bonds are a _magical phenomenon_? Honestly, you’re fine. I saw her grab your hand. No matter what you’re thinking, Nesta’s not going to do to you what she did to Eris.”  
 _  
Bleedover,_ Cassian was thinking, the colors and motions and feelings that seemed to trickle into his body. Real. _Nesta._ Fury, longing, hands around his throat- Cassian’s skin might as well have been the surface of the sun.

It was all real.  
  
And then he realized what else Lucien had said. Looked up.“What did Nesta do to _Eris?_ ”  
  
The wary look Azriel and Lucien exchanged did nothing to slow the furious, scared thud of Cassian’s heart. It was muscle memory to hate Eris. Cassian could accept that he’d been made to do terrible things under Beron’s torturous rule, but that didn’t mean he liked the man.  
  
“During the takeover,” Azriel began, “They were cornered by some of Beron’s guards. Nesta killed five of them in the time it took Eris to behead and burn one”-  
  
“He dropped right down in the blood spatter and proposed to her,” Lucien interrupted, accent thick with mirth, “The whole damned Autumn thing, _blood of the moon, flame of forest, throne of bone.”_  
  
The seams of the pillow in Cassian lap protested his grip.   
  
“ _The stupid bastard,_ ” Lucien howled, “Is quoting ancient poetry in the middle of a fight and Nesta just starts yelling at him to stop. And Eris is such a fucking prick that he yells back- she’s a queen, she deserves a throne, he’d give it to her- and _Nesta kicked him in the head.”  
_   
Cassian’s gaze swung in disbelief from Lucien laughing so hard he was beginning to weep, to Azriel’s fond smile. “She knocked him out and locked him in a closet for safety.”  
  
“I honestly think she’s going to kill him someday,” Lucien rasped. “It’s beautiful. He turns out not to be a vicious sadist, _just an incredibly stupid asshole_ , but he’s still going to get his face burned off.”  
  
Azriel, who knew Cassian better, kicked his lifelong friends ankle. Gently. Companionably. “He’s no threat to her, Eris just wants to marry a woman powerful enough to keep him the throne. Autumn won’t accept him otherwise.”  
  
“Pathetic,” Cassian managed, around his dry throat. He’d take Azriel’s word on anything- and Az would never allow a real threat to walk free. Neither, Cassian knew, would Nesta. Or, gods only knew, Elain.  
  
“ _Pathetic,_ ” Lucien crooned back, happily. “You have any more extremely awkward questions for me?”  
  
Not a king in this room, Cassian flipped him off.   
  
Lucien obligingly threw a decorative cushion at him in response. “You’ve got two hours to calm down. Do it somewhere else so I can divest my husband of his very attractive ceremonial armor now, _please.”  
_  
Azriel’s answering smile was nothing short of wicked.   
  
But he untangled from Lucien long enough to rise and walk Cassian to the door. Paused, arms crossed on their threshold, not a shadow to be seen. “She was happy, you know.”  
  
“Happy?”  
  
A hum in agreement, beloved black eyes laughing at him. “To see you. So happy it hurt.” Whatever was happening with Cassian’s unmoored embarrassment of an expression, it made Az grin.  
  
Cassian shoved him back through the doorway.  
  
Alone, leaned against the cold stone of the hallway until it ached through his scarred wings, an anchor to present, physical reality. A feeling outside the rising, crashing thunder of his beating heart. _  
_  
Nesta Archeron had come to Illyria and _smiled._

***

She didn’t come to dinner.   
  
Or to meet- Cassian didn’t even have a chance to allow himself to feel pathetic waiting for her. Instead, he’d returned to his chambers to wrestle out of heavy, obsidian trailing finery and found a note in her flowing hand excusing herself before the sky had darkened.  
  
Fine Dawn paper, gold edges absolutely Day- Nesta’s unmistakable handwriting forming a simple, devastating apology with wounding formality.  
  
The note was attached to a bottle of wine finer than anything Cassian had seen since breaking into Rhysand’s cellars with Morrigan, a lifetime ago. Carefully set aside, alone only with a heart treacherously thundering, Cassian traced the letters.  
 _  
Nesta. _Just Nesta _-_ no title or family name, mystifying beneath her diplomatic words entailing trouble with Autumn, a request of her nominal neutrality to sit in on a Summer meeting beneath the moon.  
  
Delicate paper held careful in his hand, Cassian closed his eyes and breathed.  
  
A single fiery ember that couldn’t survive the nighttime chill at this elevation, her scent clung to the paper. Cassian carefully inhaled, before mechanically dressing for bed without pretending for even a second that he wasn’t going to pick it right back up again- that he was going to get any sleep at all.  
  
Daybreak came early, and Nesta didn’t show up to breakfast either.  
  
Sunset red ribbons tied over her shoulders, Nesta didn’t appear until hours laters, a swirl of burning, dying light, wielding the pale borrowed sword of the Dawn Court ambassador to Amren’s wicked glee.   
  
Testing an open channel of power through the steel, quietly, intensely debating the alchemic principles that guided how much of her magic could be held manifest. A pure, ceremonial thing in her hand- until damask and white whirled, a neatly sliced through volcanic _boulder_ where Nesta had been standing. 

If Cassian wore the scythe over his shoulder the next day, no one commented but Aayla.

Nesta was everywhere and nowhere. A wild wind blazing through Illyrian halls, asking _what exactly the Winter officials wanted with the diamond trade,_ terrifying Illyrian Lords and Springs simpering ambassador alike walking around with bare arms, dreamt torturous armor draped like jewelry over her gowns, Day gold and Autumn bone.   
  
Cassian smelt the poison painted on its sharp edges and thought for a frozen, endless minute, he was going to blackout from sheer _arousal.  
_  
For all that he never had a second alone with her, Cassian refused to make the same mistakes twice. Stole blushing, incoherent moments to speak to her every day. Learned to only blink and keep going as his heart pounded, as even the slightest brush of her hand transferred an ocean of feeling.   
  
She would never be greeted by his silence again.   
  
On the fifth day, Nesta showed up to the meetings hair unbound.   
  
And Cassian had _never-_ he strained against his pained memories, rioted in frozen muscles- he’d never actually seen her like this. Burnished as silk, flowing like water, an in-between color that defied description, darkness shot honeyed beside Illyrian curls.   
  
Distracting enough that he missed the fact for several seconds that today she was shadowed by not one but two Day Court scribes, both of whom Cassian was reasonably sure hadn’t been present in his kingdom even a moment before. Between them, presented at Nesta’s silent signal, acres of fine paper made a trade treaty that encompassed every Court.

Every Court, and Illyria.  
  
Merchants daughter, Day Court’s Second, a sword upheld: Nesta Archeron had bound them all together, each line of ink promise and protection.  
  
Cassian imagined Nesta could feel the pride.  
  
Her hair moved as she did, and Cassian- _Cassian was going to burst apart._ He wanted to thank her. He want to congratulate her- whisper worship against her skin, learn what all that dark silk would feel like falling in his face.   
  
It spun through his head- wanted the ribbons of her gown wrapped around his wrists until they cut into flesh, wanted the safe harbor of seclusion to try to speak to her and say something real.  
  
Cassian wanted, as he had since the second her saw her, to touch.  
  
To touch and be touched, to speak and be heard, to breathe in her scent and _know_ \- that he was allowed, that he might be wanted, that this was real and happening.  
  
Illyria was not lost, and neither, in the end, was Cassian.  
  
Seven hours later, Cassian presided over a feast. 

Bounty brought down by Illyria hunting parties, wine at Helion’s benevolence, the fine foods of what had been vital outlying Night Court farms left behind on the wrong side of the border and graciously accepted into Illyrian clans for the chance of peace.   
  
The world felt like a _dream-_ Cassian moved mechanically through it. He knew what his people needed, had tally after tally thriving in the back of his mind about what could be done, what still needed to be _accomplished_ \- but the only thing that seemed real was Nesta Archeron.  
  
Nesta, in black Library linen, long sleeves for mountain night rendered glorious absurdity beyond her bared shoulders and back. Gold flashing on her hands in candle light. A smile, quick as the gleam off a knifeblade, sharing a quiet corner and flagon of wine with Azriel as Elain and Lucien danced.  
  
She disappeared, between one crescendo and the next, and Cassian followed.  
  
It felt like a bad idea, on overstep as Cassian moved away from glorious noise into frigid night- but there she was. 

Waiting.  
  
Unable to speak, _unable to breathe_ , Cassian followed Nesta out under the open sky.

_***_

The battlements of ruin, risen to greatness under Thesan’s hands, were studded with glowing hunks of rock. Trapped suns in proud black and grey stone, just enough light that Nesta, possessed as she was by madness, could see the color of Cassian’s eyes.  
  
She’d wanted him to follow.  
  
Didn’t have a goddamn idea what to do when he did- the silence stretched, hypnotic and seething, as Cassian faced her. Hours, minutes, the steady rise of the moon- Nesta couldn’t have counted it if she tried.  
  
Instead, she watched him swallow. Once, twice, the ripple of muscle pulling as a tide. “Please. I- _Nesta_.”  
  
Nesta wasn’t sure what Cassian was asking for. Wasn’t certain the action even mattered- the freezing night, the empty sky, two years, four years- what could actually be of consequence but that he _wanted?  
_   
It had been five days. 

The deliberate, barely present brush of his calloused hands passing off things to her in meetings. Serving her tea first in rooms full of nobility and ambassadors- _like he wasn’t a King, like he was in service of her.  
_   
Cassian was practically a threat to his own gods damned authority, and stars help her, Nesta _liked_ it.   
  
Of course not a single Illyrian even blinked. Nesta, aside from Amren, was the only female representative- and Illyria of old as Illyria again, held women sacred.   
  
A scare third of their population. Who’d broken Night Court authority, carried in secret the last holy remains of Illyrian language and traditions; women, some barely trained, who’d nonetheless stood against the horde of Darkbringers ready to die. 

Illyria did not forget.

Where Nesta fit in the fast forming web of what had once been a gloriously complex civilization, she didn’t know- but the sight of their blood-sanctified King lowering his head before her was greeted with _approval.  
  
Glory to her name.   
_   
As for the High Fae, well, Nesta had personally assured there wasn’t a representative here that didn’t on some personal level fear her. _  
_  
She hadn’t been avoiding Cassian, _she was busy._ Helion’s daily missives asking if she’d frozen in the wind yet, inviting her to come home and enjoy the wine harvest with him, didn’t help. Nesta was a _competent_ diplomat- she had the instincts, the way with words, easy dignity- but the patience wasn’t natural.  
  
Wasn’t anything but strained, listening to political pandering all the while knowing Cassian was watching her out of the corner of his eye.   
  
Like he was looking at her now.   
  
Nesta’s back hit the wall.   
  
Not a retreat, she needed the anchor of cold stone as she looked up and up, the green in Cassian’s beautiful eyes a flood to be drowned in.   
  
He was a wonderful King- compassionate, strong- a shockingly skilled negotiator, but he was also the man who’d run into a wall at the sight of her.  
 _  
He smelled like the hearth of a home she’d never had.  
_   
“Please,” Cassian whispered again.   
  
She didn’t know what he wanted. Nesta had been so pleased to see him and so _furious-_ brave, weary, finally ready. Her rage was that they could have had this _all along;_ her hope absurd and glowing as the sun as Cassian’s gaze never wavered, his attention that had to be dragged away from her again and again.  
  
It felt good. But this was real and raw, the note of pain in his voice carrying on the mountain wind.  
  
“Cassian.”  
  
She could say it like an Illyrian now, all breath in the middle. Knew what it meant: _Loyalheart as dawn.  
_  
Nesta thought he was going to kiss her.   
  
Say whatever he’d been trying to tell her in stolen asides all ridiculous week, red-cheeked and rough voiced.

Instead, Cassian breathed back her name like a sigh and closed his eyes. Swallowed. Slipped one step closer.  
  
Nesta had tried to forget the shape of his body. She’d seen Lucien and Azriel fight together so many times now that she could recognize some of the grace as simply _Illyrian-_ training and strength _._ Azriel moved like water, but Cassian, Cassian was flame itself.   
  
She’d always responded to that deft beauty- cursed and felt her heart race at the sheer power of Cassian, from the height that dwarfed her to the teasing smile and barely hidden sure physicality.  
  
He was beautiful- he’d always been beautiful.  
  
It had never scared her. The opposite- but Nesta should have guessed that in the end, Cassian was the one of the two of them who knew how to be gentle.  
  
“ _Nesta_ ,” He murmured, a prayer, a question, and melted are her body like silk.   
  
What Cassian had been trying to ask for, fear in his eyes: a hug.   
  
A hand snuck behind her head, between Nesta’s skull and the cold stone. She found herself settling into a gentle cocoon, encompassed in the strength of Cassian’s arms so softly as a dream. He’d craned downward, cheek pressed to cheek.

The whole wheeling beauty of the sky was screened completely by the his wings, warm and quiet as Cassian barely seemed to breathe.   
  
She couldn’t actually raise her arms. This embrace asked nothing of Nesta- Cassian would have moved at her slightest provocation, _but Nesta didn’t want him to.  
_  
She settled for lifting her chin, the slow affectionate drag of skin on skin that couldn’t have been anything but purposeful, rattling Nesta down to her ironclad High Fae bones. “If you hold your breath much longer, we’re both going to end up on the ground.”  
  
And Cassian- her heart was all sparks, catching- laughed. _  
_  
The quiet huff of it stirred her hair, a softer, rougher twin to the golden sound that had once turned heads on Velaris streets. 

“Sorry. I didn’t actually think,” The sentence tapered off into lightness as Cassian shifted to carefully nuzzle at her hairline, lips soft on Nesta’s brow.  
  
It took her a second to answer.   
  
“You didn’t think?”  
  
“Mhmm,” Cassian sighed again, shoulders coming down in a boneless slump that was somehow even more tantalizing than sheer proximity. His whole face was in her hair. “I didn’t actually think I’d get this far?”  
  
Catching the inside of her cheek between her teeth, Nesta tasted blood before she carefully murmured in reply, feelings roiling inside her. He’d greeted her like a High Lord, that first day, as King of this ancient kingdom.  
  
Here in the dark was just Cassian, and Nesta could guess what he’d wanted. Understood the line time and pain had drawn between them; Cassian expected the bare minimum, wouldn’t ask for more. What he wanted or needed. What Cassian dreamt of so often it spilled over into Nesta’s sleeping mind, blood in the water.   
  
“It’s a way to…say hello, isn’t it?”  
  
She freed a hand enough to reach up and tap his cheek, lingering.  
  
Once, the Illyrians had filled the sky. They prayed to the stars and the sky blessed them, words of their language a song that could shape the wind itself. Mighty and many, free as flight and ferocious at heart as the killing winter frost of their mountain homes.  
  
Air itself was divine.  
  
It wasn’t _hello,_ exactly. Nesta knew that- it was lovers at long journey’s end, shield brothers at victory’s hard-won peak, life for life like the swords of fallen High Houses at Nesta’s feet.  
  
The shape salutation would had taken, if they’d been ready to have this all along.

Cassian laughed again, the sound all shaky exhale. “I should have known you’d recognize that.”  
  
“Well,” Nesta _purred_ back, “I am a very good ambassador.”  
  
“And Librarian.”  
  
Her heart was going to burst.  
  
Nesta reached higher, and tugged lightly at the hair curled against Cassian’s neck. _Playfully._ Until he was grinning and moving, shifting until their foreheads met, hands leaving their careful placement to drift featherlight up Nesta’s arms.  
  
He was trembling.   
  
Freed, _greedy,_ Nesta skimmed her fingertips over the column of his throat, fever hot beneath her hands.  
  
A speeding echo, Nesta could feel the reverb of Cassian’s heart, pounding beneath her own ribs. All he’d wanted, the taste of Cassian’s longing burning in her mouth: to be allowed to touch. 

To hear her voice speaking just to him, to feel her physically safe- an unrelenting care that burned.  
  
Fine whiskey. Striking lightening. Beautiful enough to break her heart.   
  
Nesta wanted to swallow his smile whole. 

The moon overhead their only observer, face to face and soul to soul, Nesta and Cassian breathed.   


***

The bells of Illyria’s royal citadel struck midnight, but Elain Archeron did not move.  
  
Accustomed as she was to the deep waters of time, the blackest hours of night were no more an imposition to her eyes than bitter cold to her immortal body. She wore a cloak still- fur and velvet, the kind gift of a secret Winter visit, but more for fondness than comfort.  


At the highest point in a sky-loved country,Elain turned her senses to the wind and listened.

She could not hear windsong.  


So much as she and Nesta were dogged by the legacy of their younger sister chasing after them- neither was about to make her mistakes

Elain was a creature of time- she could apply her unique gifts to similar outcome. But she would never be so vain, so wretchedly foolish, as to call the words of wind her own, even looking a thousand years in both directions.

No Archeron was an Illyrian.  
  
The gifts of these mountains were not for them. Love could be no claim of ownership.  
  
Her younger sister had worn wings like a providence won and fought to save the world. But she’d also taken ceasefire as forgone promise, never bothering to sort through the shattered peices left behind.

Nesta and Elain, who had drunk down and consumed what made that entire broken and beautiful world could not afford to be so circumspect.   


Dark and eddied waters, the farthest flung and most important- where Elain had gotten lost in the time, three weeks fae and looking for an answer that would end in peace, her sisters safe, the world unpainted in blood. 

It had been too broad a wish, the tides too strong for her freshly reborn skills. She knew the remedy now.  


Prythian was _old.  
_

Older than the Courts whose power sank deep into its soil to shape it. Older still than the continent itself, where High Fae supremacy had slowly crumbled for the last two thousand years, a final deathknell in the freedom of human slaves still echoing. 

Older than the Cauldron that long ago bore the first High Fae, millennia before Elain and Nesta would become her last chosen daughters.   


Prythian was old, but just like these mountains that had tried and tried, loved and loved their people, it never forgot.  


Prythian remembered when the power that would become the Cauldron woke from eddied swirls of magic, impossible glories that made a mythical place. Prythian had loved Death as much as it adored Life, in their many faces; valued and treasured its monsters so much as its beauties.  


Prythian remembered a world that could not be held under the authority of High Fae alone.

And Rhysand- _Lord of Nightmares, High Lord of Night, Mind-breaker and betrayer, husband to her sister, forevermore the exiled, banished son of his mother’s gods who did not forgive_ \- had put back together the book that woke the land.

Elain had looked ahead and looked behind: she understood that peace meant _balance.  
_

_Prythian remembered._

On the roof of the highest tower, in the heartland of an ancient and honorable kingdom, Elain hummed her brother’s eery song, and looked ahead. Listened.

The snowstorm brought in on this late spring wind that would paint the sky in pink across Nesta’s face, entrap them all to ensure secrets would come to light.

Longing air that carried all the way to the Starlit City, where Feyre dwelled in peace. Royal in her corner, mourning a sky that had belonged in truth to neither her or Rhysand- even in anger, even in grief, the City seemed perfect and calm to the youngest Archeron.  
  
But the walls were graven with ash, and it was children of the Rainbow, merchants of the diamond quarter, women of the Sidra harbor who wrote in that ash that could not be washed away: _there are no low fae._

Her sister would not know for a long, long time.  
  
But what the wind brought, the ocean learned. 

All the way down in the dreaming depths, where Bryaxis hid among her children, a hundred generations of nightmares seen across the dark sea down. The prisoner of the library that was not the Library knew again the skys color, the thousand shades of blue that made home- she too hummed the song for waking the forgotten, dead or dreaming. 

Passed reverie to all those who saw, and a thousand voices sang back for freedom in the waters of the world.  
  
Where water touched, land began and forest roots stretched deep. The trees were old, the trees were hungry. The trees remembered when they had been _revered_. A legend of Spring, the songs of the dryads long thought myth echoed forgotten through hill and tamed glen.  
  
The forest ached with inanition- _their little sisters carved to shape of topiaries, tree sap and woodland hearts taken, ornament and kindling, gilded and suffocated_ \- the forest remembered when it had been fed on blood. 

A Lord who’d abused power he never wanted found that roses were woodland creatures too, and even briars had their loyalties.

Elain listened, and smiled. 

***

The glow woke Cassian.  
  
A sunrise held captive in the frozen haze of a late, late-season snowstorm, entire sky of fathomless white painted in gold and red. 

Responsibility colored his first three thoughts- of sending experienced Illyrians to the farming communities of Night Court refugees to ensure they fared well. The extra time inside that would need some structure for the ambassadors in place of the planned afternoon display of young Illyrian fighting skills. The junior warriors themselves, who’d need the opportunity made up.

Cassian stumbled out of bed and sent off notes: patrols to be sent out, roaring fires to be lit, an enormous breakfast prepared for their doubtless half-frozen and not particularly pleased visitors.

And then, feet bare on the cold wood floor, Cassian allowed himself a moment to set down the crown and think what he really wanted- did Nesta shine in the storm light?

Did the rest of his people look to at the blizzard and think, _not a single one of us lives in a godforsaken tents anymore?_

Did it even snow in Day? Was the warmth trickling into his veins _emotional,_ or the purely physical transference of Nesta, who hated the cold with a vengeance, standing before a fire?

_Could Cassian ever hope to be those flames?  
_   
Soft and calm, the wind sang lightly through the icy world. _  
_

Until Lucien Vanserra crashed through his door, wearing even less clothing than Cassian himself and a vicious smile. “The messenger relays- they don’t work out of kingdom yet?”  


“They don’t work at all,” Cassian said slowly. Had he slept even two hours? No- no because _Nesta_ -“We’re still sending falcons between settlements.” _  
_

Falcons for peaceful messages, fires burning on mountainsides in warning- it had been eighteen months now since Cassian had lit Ramiel in the beacon of civil war, lightening called down on ancient obsidian by a priestesses bleeding call.

Grand, powerful- but not easy communication.

Illyrians might not naturally tend to the sort of enchantment other courts possessed, but they could use magical tools like any faery. One of the hundred things Cassian was trying to get _right-_ magical interconnectivity, the clans bound by more than banners and belief.   


Arms crossed over his bare chest, the narrowed gold gaze in front of Cassian promised _danger. “_ So none of the ambassadors are in touch with their courts.”  


Cassian rubbed sleep from his eyes. Pressed harder and longed for the temptation to ignore all of _this:_ everything from bright green silk undergarments to the apparent eminent threat of espionage or arson.   


Somewhere nearby, Nesta Archeron felt like her veins were full of liquid gold and Cassian wanted to know _why.  
_

Instead, shoulders squared, Cassian blinked the stars from his eyes and asked, “Who are we assassinating?”  


“Assassinating is a _strong word_ ,” Lucien purred, in the exact same moment Azriel shouldered through the doorway with his arms full of tea tray to say, unblinking, “Tamlin.”  


_Tamlin._

The bastard might have sided with the rest of Prythian in the end- but Cassian had neither reason or inclination to forgive the absence of Spring troops and Autumn banners in the weeks his army had spent being obliterated. 

Beron was dead, Oberon with him. But Tamlin- Tamlin was by all accounts still walking around as though the world had personally wronged his faultless life. 

Personally, _ferociously,_ Cassian didn’t need to know Nesta as well as he did to understand the rightful crimes the elder Archerons would personally attribute to him.

The High Lord responsible for kidnapping their baby sister, for altering their minds, for eventually ensuring their murders and rebirth- not to mention the equally corporal outrage committed against Lucien’s person across two centuries. _  
_

Cassian _sentimentally_ agreed- _they protected their own to the last fucking breath, they were family_ \- but Cassian, King of a newborn kingdom, _could not know this.  
_

The Illyrians could not be party to assassination of a High Lord of Prythian in _any_ way.  


Counting, eyes closed, Cassian ground out, _“Az.”  
_

Reply was gentle steam, wafting against his face. Eyes cracked open to accept the cup, Cassian also nodded hello to Elain, who’d joined the uninvited, unannounced invasion into his bedchamber. 

No one would have stopped them- the entire royal guard, the Legion, the priestesses-none would bar the three outsiders that had stood against the black tide; iron-clad allies, _legends_ , three of the four people they were instructed to allow unfettered personal access to their King.

Night or day.

Cassian was considering rewording that edict to bar all but one from the first hour of dawn.

Hair so windblown that curls stood riotous inches high, a cold-flushed Elain smiled back. Cheekily. _Merrily._ “Does it count as assassination if none of us raised a hand?”  


Dropping sugar in Lucien’s tea, Azriel slanted a glance at Cassian as he replied. “I raised a hand. Had to thank the wind and sky for hours not spent getting blood out of leather.” Rather than pass the precisely prepared cup to his husband, Az instead snagged Lucien’s wrist and reeled him, laughing, onto his lap. “I was going to rip off his fucking head.”  


Elain nodded serenely, and sipped her tea.   


Arms overflowing with long, sun-brown limbs, Azriel took pity on Cassian. Lucien leaned wordless to one side to let him speak unobstructed, one sharp cheek against Az’s stubbled jaw. “Spring is in open revolt.”  


“The roses run red,” Elain breathed, singsong dreamy and true. But her smile was sharp as the words that followed, “Spring is the land of _becoming._ It cannot be led by a stagnant man, _rotted through_.”  


“Mold, petal?”  


Elain snickered at her mates words. “Putrefaction.”

Cassian sat down and drank his tea. “The ambassador, Lord Aubren? He’s”-  


“A sneering, violent little shit who’s going to arrive home to a bloodbath? Yes,” Lucien interrupted. “I wouldn’t feel too bad. The fucker keeps _a selkie as a pet."  
_

“And,” Azriel’s voice had dropped several octaves and roughly a hundred degrees, “He once broke three of your ribs.”

He’d also called Nesta Archeron’s utterly modest, beautifully tasteful sleeveless dress a _disgrace._

“Lucien.” Cassian had to wait for the intensive, absolutely blush inducing staring to end. Did he look at Nesta like that? Did people notice? _Did Nesta look back?_

“ _Lucien_ \- I could have stopped him at the border. I would have.”  


If Cassian loved kingship for one single thing, it was that. Violence and wonder mightmake his entire reputation to the outside world; but that nearly mythic skill for bloodshed meant he could protect whoever he wanted. Could and _would_ -if Cassian had his way, no Illyrian would bleed for generations.   


No member of his tiny, chosen family needed bear any insult here, where Cassian could stop it.   


Broken bones, Cassian knew, were the very least of what Spring had visited on Autumn’s seventh son.  


Lucien waved a hand in reply, day-gold rings flashing. Thank you didn’t need to be said.  


Wouldn’t be said, as Elain went on in the lull, light and bright and _dangerous, “_ When _is_ Nesta coming?” 

“Just left her rooms,” Azriel said with ease, the flicker of a shit-eating grin overtaking the neutral joy of sleepy _, bloody thirsty_ , domestic bliss. “She’s on her way.”  


Cassian _absolutely_ did not fumble his cup. Merely set it down, hissing quietly over seared knuckles, before escaping his audience to put on real clothing. _Pants._ All the dignified, splendid bullshit draped over the chair of his overflowing desk, ready to wade through immortal politics.

Wrestled into something that could be called propriety, Cassian was trying to twist back his hair when he realized he wasn’t alone. Hadn’t heard her steps or felt her presence over the gasps of his racing heart- but awareness unnoticed was enough a trickle Cassian found himself smiling the second before Nesta spoke. 

“You missed some,” She murmured, striding across the room to reach for a cluster of unbraided curls, sprung free, _like it was nothing_.

Cassian was on _fire._

Contrary to the fact that Cassian _dreamt_ of those pale hands in his hair, he twisted. Hid his growing smile against that outstretched wrist, linked his fingers against cold knuckles to hold her hand like the precious thing that it was.  


Echoing, Lucien’s wild laugh burst through the wall.

Cassian didn’t move- neither did Nesta.  


“I was giving up anyway,” Cassian eventually replied. If Nesta felt any sort of way about that fact Cassian’s entire body curved around her presence instinctively- _if she liked it_ \- the bond was locked down so hard nothing escaped her skin.   


Instead, wordless, she reached again with her free hand. He’d already leaned down.  


Nesta carefully knocked free the half-braided, half-pinned wreckage, curls springing back against her cool fingertips. 

Too cool- this room with it’s jewel box of stained glass windows was glacial, dim as the storm’s light slowly turned to something less surreal, muted beyond the sunrise. Head to toe in velvet and silk, Nesta had to feel it.  
  
Cassian caught her retreating hand and trapped it, palm over palm, against his chest.   
_  
And Nesta shuddered._

A thrashing helpless thing was alive beneath her hand, beneath his bones. Wings fluttering fast, straining delicate panic that rose and rose until Cassian was speaking past it, feathered hope caught in his throat.   
  
“You’re cold?” A rasp, too quiet.  
  
Nesta shook her head. Her whole proud face was upturned to his, graced with the smallest whisper of a smile. The slightest flex of her hand finally drew him to relinquish her other wrist- the correct motion, as her expression grew sharp, lovely edges.  
  
“Helion sent me something,” She said simply. It was not enough- not a warning at all as she pulled a pale orb from her coat- _blown bubbled, beautiful glass, the glow like midday sun_ \- and threw it to shatter at their feet.  


Impossibly loud in the quiet between them.  


But when Cassian looked- it had taken every bit of control he’d ever possessed to not move, to not shield her, trust beyond the crash- there were no broken pieces. Nothing but light that traveled upward, a haze around them both.  


Midday sun had been wrong. It was warmer than that; truly hot, racing over skin and lingering, the light of high summer against outstretched wings. Delight wrenched a sigh from Cassian- heat and the scent of Nesta.  
  
“ _Spring_ ,” She said, laugh in her voice, “Late spring in Day. Memory can’t be bottled, but plants will lend back sun rays to the Lord of Day.”  
  
Later- much, much later and utterly alone, it would occur to Cassian she wasn’t _explaining_. It was a reply, and _how_ it ached.   


But first, now, Nesta allowed herself to be pulled closer. Leaned easy with the motion until Cassian could feel her every breath, the red bloom of light from the window painting over her neck, her lips, the edge of Nesta’s jaw.  


Until Lucien, much like he had before, popped through the doorway. “Nes, do you want”-

Five hundred years of oppression, two thousand years of tradition, a history that spanned a war that had taken her life- Cassian dropped both Nesta’s hands. Stepped back. Drew himself to utterly torturous, completely respectful distance.  


Lucien was still talking, but Cassian couldn’t hear it over the rushing in his ears.  


Nesta looked like _stone._ Frozen.  


It wasn’t just muscle memory- the fact that touching her had always felt like a risk, an insane impossible rightness. _Cassian didn’t know what Nesta wanted._ He wouldn’t take- Nesta’s hold on him was irrefutable and private as he could make it, he wouldn’t claim what wasn’t his, put Nesta in any position she wasn’t prepared for.

_He wouldn’t_ \- but Nesta was seething.   


_Did you mean it?_   


Her silent words were a contained explosion, hotter than sunlight, but this time no part of Nesta’s power spared Cassian the jagged edges: his mind was full of swords. A broken blade tossed into the sea, a worthless promise discarded. A victory’s glory abridged on both sides in flame, a crown at her feet- feeling and fealty larger than words, vaster than the whole northern sky.  


“ _Nesta,_ ”- It kept running behind his eyes, more than Cassian could explain- jade in blue-black hair, blood on Nesta’s hands somehow less violent than the proceeding memory of a siphon crushed in her delicate fist. A library full of light laid empty, longing to be loved. “I wouldn’t have-“  


Senescence of the sun she’d chosen, the gloriously fatal burst of a star- this was the ocean of flame Cassian carried beneath his ribs, a heat spun of his heart and her soul. He couldn’t reply with words, only the endless tide.

In his head, in his heart, Nesta breathed his name. It sounded so much like it had when she found him in a pool of his own blood- _such frustrated fury, such untempered yearning_ \- Cassian didn’t know which of them the feeling really came from.   


_Cassian. Then mean it._

A noise- helpless, _horrible_ \- escaped his clenched jaw.   


And all at once, Nesta came back to life. Spun fire away back beneath reality, turned to pluck up one the pins she’d pulled from his hair. Met Cassian’s gaze, and shoved the pin into her already immaculate braid, driven through with spikes of gold- the facsimile of a crown, sharp edges of a hungry mouth.

It was _nothing_ \- it was an action of such unfathomable intimacy Cassian didn’t know how he could have explained to someone who wasn’t born and raised under Illyrian wind. 

She swept from the room, right past Lucien, still leaning in the open doorway.

_“Cassian_ ,” His wretched, adored, _not quite brother-in-law_ drawled, “You really don’t know.”

If Cassian punched him in the arm on his way past just _slightly_ harder than he should have, well- Lucien Vanserra was easily one of the strongest High Fae he’d ever met, and to that point, laughed. 

The seemingly ceaseless sound carried them to the next room in time for Cassian to watch the casual, incredible use of power as Nesta clinked her teacup against Elain’s and transmuted the liquid in both from tea to coffee.  


They all left together- down the heavily warded, intricately carved palace halls, into greatrooms where ambassadors wandered, the casual talk sharp as the crack of kindling from enormous, roaring fires.  


Cassian swore he could still hear the echo of Lucien’s laugh three rooms away, when Winter sealed the doors.  


It was a clever enough plan. The space here used for diplomatic meetings was divided into three arched rooms: sky, mountain, stone. Enormous doorways between the three thrown open, their prodigious height echoing above.   


The doors themselves were enchanted obsidian- a force breaking through would have better spent their efforts fighting through the walls. 

They didn’t shut all at once.  
  
One by resounding one, each crash carrying, the noise of instantly on alert guards, the questions of officials- indignant, angry Spring, bored Autumn- successfully drowned out all else, as the ambassador of Winter began to speak.  


The furthest room in, Winter had caged not just Cassian.  


Their ambassador, their guards- Nesta, frozen by the fire, quicksilver eyes narrow.  


“You signed a treaty,” Nesta murmured, cold as the frost worn in the lord’s hair like fine lace. “You signed in _blood_.”

Nesta, like Cassian, had never needed a threat spelled out in her life.   
  
Ortharian- tall and proud, paler than snow, a man who’d served Kallias’ father, and father before him- inclined his head. Cassian had always thought him honorable.

“You are correct as always, Librarian.” He turned a white gaze on Cassian. “I signed for my people, and my Court. I have always stood by my Lord, as you once did, Lord of Illyria. Did you not love him still, with the blood of children on his hands?”

The first knife came from behind.  


But the more important mark- a curved blade, a slash that carried before Cassian could blast his way across the room- the winter guard who’d been stationed at the doorway winnowed to slice Cassian’s stomach to ruin.  


“Please know,” Ortharian said, as blood rushed, “It is absolutely personal.”

Nesta snapped his neck.  


Nesta-

A single, horrific, fluid motion: Nesta closing the distance between herself and the pale winter guard in the second it took Cassian to go down, before Ortharian hit the floor.

He watched it as though time had slowed to meet her-  


Nesta winnowing across the room and stealing the knife out of Cassian’s boot with perfect accuracy. The hit she _allowed_ to land- exactly as Cassian would have done, _pain nothing,_ her bottom lip splitting- inviting the much larger faery inside her shorter reach exactly in time for Nesta to spin the hilt of the dagger in her hand and slam it home in her assailants throat.  


She was covered in blood before he could fall.  


Nesta dropped to Cassian’s side without hesitation, smaller hands’s covering his own as he held the great gaping tear across his middle.  


“ _Nesta,_ ” Cassian breathed.  


Illyrians flooded into the room, closing ranks around them. From the sound, the fight was still going on, but she was absolutely steady.   


“Shut up,” Nesta hissed, but she _smiled,_ a single trickle of blood escaping before her lip healed. Cassian wanted to lick it off, wanted to feel the touch of her hands without the sick slide of viscera, wanted to smile back because the warriors he’d trusted were guarding her back like an impenetrable wall. 

He managed to slur the first syllable of her name instead, hand reaching for Nesta’s face, before darkness took him. 

***

Cassian opened his eyes and considered feigning unconsciousness.   


He knew, like he couldn’t feel any pain, like he knew automatically that he was _safe_ \- that Nesta was in the room. Cassian wanted for just a moment to lie in his bed in the place he’d tried to make a home, and breathe in her scent.   
  
Aayla was speaking soft, halting Illyrian, honorific syllables sliding together as she reported to Nesta what sounded like an all clear. Nesta replied in kind, before taking mercy and returning to common.   
  
“I know you’re awake,” Nesta said, startling Aayla enough Cassian could hear her wings rustling together.  
  
Cassian sat up, blanket pooling at his waist. There was no trace of the wound left across his abdomen, and someone had clearly cleaned the blood off his skin. _  
_   
He was greeted by the wide eyes of his honor guard, red-cheeked and biting down a smile over Nesta’s shoulder. The source of the blush was easy- Nesta had changed out of her bloody clothes into another sleeveless gown, was standing barefoot in the middle of his bedroom unbraiding her hair like she lived here.  
  
“All good, little one?” Cassian drawled.  
  
One of the day gold spikes that crowned Nesta’s hair fell unnoticed to the ground.   
  
Aayla executed a rapid bow, both to himself and the woman before her. Nesta interjected before the second round of bobbing wings could commence, Aayla’s flushed neck visible across the room. “You did very well today, Ch’ri. You bring honor to your clan. Would you mind terribly taking the post outside my sister’s door for the evening? I believe her usual guard was injured in the scuffle.”  
  
“Your will be done,” Aayla said very correctly, a respectful awe Cassian himself had never been afforded. “ _However_ ”-  
  
“The Lord and I have some things to discuss.” Except Nesta didn’t say _Lord,_ she breathed a word in the language of wind that meant _king_ : _sky-loved loyal honored,_ and Cassian’s heart exploded with helpless affection.  
  
Aayla contained herself to three more bows before hastily retreating.  
  
And Nesta turned around to face Cassian.  
  
He’d known she was angry from the second he’d opened his eyes. It _buzzed_ in his fingertips: _fury rage frustration fear._ Tangible adrenaline, tipping from her body to his _._ If he touched her, it would have been a fiery ocean, but as it was Cassian took the opportunity to look.  
  
She’d wiped off the gold paint on her eyes, taken off her jewelry. Cassian had often wondered if people were stupid enough to look at her and think being fae made her this way- he was lucky enough to know the truth.   
  
Nesta Archeron had been awe-inspiring and so beautiful it hurt long before she’d ever been immortal.  
  
Stripped of her armor, Nesta was devastating.  
  
Cassian met her blue, _blue_ eyes, like the sky at his favorite time of day, and thought, quite clearly, that he longed for _devastation_. To be torn asunder, to let another holy storm take him.   
_  
Too vividly-_ because Nesta sucked in a breath like a fire feeding on air to ignite and started pacing.  
  
“Why don’t you tell me,” Nesta hissed, “What exactly _you,_ a man who has been king for six months of a country that hasn’t existed in thousands of years, were thinking, ordering everyone in your service to protect my life above all others, including your own.”  
  
She was _so_ close.  
  
Furious. As ruthless as she’d been against the assassin. Cassian might have been healed, but his skin still remembered the burning touch of her hands.   
  
Nesta wasn’t done.   
  
“How did you even _manage_ it?” She stalked back across the room, half unbound hair flinging pins out behind her. “ _Cassian._ I am not their queen. My- _my sister is the High Lady of Night_. I cannot be their queen. Why the _hell am I the highest ranking person in this entire kingdom?”  
_  
The last loops of her braid slithering out, Nesta ended her pacing by abruptly sitting down right in front of him, directly on the bed.   
  
Her eyes were the precise color as the sheets- blue grey dawn. Silvered blue fire, now. He hadn’t chosen it consciously, but now that he was looking nearly all the possessions he’d acquired since Illyria became Illyria were some shade of half blue.  
  
“Cassian.”  
  
It was an effort, to drag his gaze away. But it seemed slightly safer to admit this truth to the blankets fisted in his hands than Nesta Archeron’s lethal face.  
  
“I made you _ya’shansri.”  
_  
He tried not to think, in the silence that swelled, that it was exactly the kind of word Nesta loved. Ancient, melodious like fire in his mouth. A multilayered meaning that could indicate eight different things and had no modifiers- one had to be clever or intuitive enough to apply the correct one.  
  
Cassian tried not think about the fact that he owed it to Nesta, that he had the chance to speak his mother tongue at all.  
  
Whatever Nesta was thinking, it was forceful enough heat was stirring beneath _Cassian’s_ skin.  
  
Ya’shansri: god-kings blood, _red-glory-that-drips-off-a-blade-beautiful_ , holy beloved.   
  
Like a striking snake, Nesta clamped a bruising pale hand over his own. “Illyrians don’t have a crown- they’ve _never_ had a crown. _You stupid fucking prick._ You didn’t make me the Queen, you made me the _throne_?”  
  
Nesta was not a queen- Cassian was king because he was _Nestas_. The last holy beloved of the mountains had been the Clan Mother of all Clan Mothers, who ancient Illyrian kings traced their right to rule back to until High Fae had pulled them out of the sky. 

A mother goddess, a sacred touchstone.  
  
Cassian did not say, _I am King because I have led you to conquest._ Cassian offered himself up to his gods, let himself be taken by the beating heart of the mountain and said: _I am hers. I am Illyrian, I am yours, I am child of the sky and rage of the storm, but the god of my heart is her.  
_   
Shaken by the heat of her skin, Cassian looked up.  
  
“I sanctified your bloodline.” He shook his head, guilt and horror and _love_ \- it had always been love, choking, blinding, impossible love- thick in his throat. Cassian continued, quiet. Raw. “You raised the mountains, Nesta. You saved me. You are the blood that endows rule and the voice that rides the storm. Forever.”  
 _  
Ya’shansri, holy beloved. _Subject of worship by only one: the King, worthy of rule over his people by the grace of his gods, worthy for the shape of that devotion borne. 

Her hand spasmed, and Cassian covered it with his own, twisting their fingers together.  
  
She was already shaking her head, but Cassian finished miserably. “Everything I am belongs to you. Nesta, Illyria would not exist without you, so you are Illyria. I know you’re not mine- I know you’re not-but I am yours. I will be until I am ash on the wind and the stars burn out.”

_“Cassian,_ ” She said again, voice a ruin.   
_  
I love you,_ Cassian said silently. _I love you and I have loved you and I will love you, even when you leave.  
_  
Nesta closed her eyes.   
_  
Love,_ Cassian heard, softer than a sigh, _was never the problem.  
_   
“I did it to give your people a home. To stop Rhysand from slaughtering you like a dog. Fix the balance. It wasn’t for you.”  
 _  
It wasn’t only for you,_ Cassian heard.  
  
It made him smile, pain blooming with the happiness. Nesta was sitting on his bed, legs curled underneath her hiding the fact that her feet wouldn’t touch the floor. He could feel her heartbeat in his chest, taste the resolute iron of love like blood on the back of his tongue.  
  
He stroked his thumb over her knuckles. Traced the shape of the enormous diamond ring she’d had made from what have once been the war crown of the High Lord of Night. Watched as color that had nothing to do with fury bloomed high of her cheeks.  
  
Cassian could only _imagine_ what she was reading off the skin contact.  
  
“How,” Cassian asked, “Can I begin to thank you?”  
  
Nesta arched a perfect brow.   
  
For a long moment, Cassian wondered if she was going to yell again.   
  
“Still have that bottle of wine I sent?” He dipped his chin in answer, larger grin fighting onto Cassian’s face. “Fine. Also, get your honor guard to stop _curtsying_ at me, it’s ridiculous in Illyrian leathers. You might as well open it and tell me all the names of the wretched new Lords I had to stop from slaughtering ambassadors.”  
  
So Cassian did.  
  
Let himself laugh when it became apparent Nesta, propped against his headboard, was not sharing the wine- _It was a gift, Nes- Alcohol is reserved for people who haven’t seen their own intestines today, Red Glory of Illyria-_ and talked.   
  
About the last remaining clans. About the many, many low fae who’d lived outside the bounds of Velaris, now part of Cassian’s burgeoning nation. About the language they were all trying to learn and the priestesses who said he’d been irrevocably altered by the lightening of awakening gods.   
  
Cassian told Nesta of the stone carvers relearning their great-great-grandfathers craft, precious warrior children, tea grown in steep mountains passes, and swords forged of fallen stars.  
  
About the storm and crown and his endless feeling like a fraud.  
  
Nesta had scoffed. _You’re a great king. You’ll be a great king until you drop dead at the absurd age of seven hundred from sheer worry, having been perfect and miserable every day of the last century.  
_  
Quieter, in his mind, in his heart _\- you’ve given all of yourself there is to give. You cannot feel guilty for sleeping, for living.  
_  
Cassian should have known all along he wouldn’t have to explain it. His people needed him- their future depended on him. Cassian would have died to build a world for Illyria, would serve until he could no more, but Cassian hated being King.  
  
Like it was easy, the silk banner of her hair over his shoulder where she’d eventually slumped, his cheek propped on the top of her head an answered prayer, Nesta said: _so choose an heir._  
  
And Cassian said, _maybe I will.  
_  
And night bled over into day as Cassian got to learn what pink dawn looked like across Nesta’s face: stark relief of impossible cheekbones, the clear line of her jaw below that _just slightly_ overfull bottom lip Cassian wanted to spend the next six centuries worshipping. 

She was the one who got up to leave- _Cassian would have happily lived and died on that bed with her-_ but, after the blankets were kicked off and every immaculate strand of her hair braided back by his slow, reverent hands, Nesta turned back to face him.  
  
“I am,” Nesta said, careful pleasure hidden a fathom deep in her light tone, “Primarily the Librarian, even while I serve in Helion’s government. In that role, it would not be unusual for a new leader to call upon library wisdom for aid.”  
  
Cassian, who’d never actually gotten _dressed_ , happiness a hectic pain, smiled. Rose very slowly to his feet and managed without rattling apart to reach for Nesta’s hand and bring her palm to his lips.   
  
He murmured his promise against her skin, trying to memorize the exact bow of her mouth, the shape she occupied here in his world.   
  
“I’ll write to you, Librarian.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We call this section, consequences.
> 
> Next up: More Nesta and Helion! What hell exactly did Nesta and Az raise in Autumn? What is the deal with all the Lucien's brothers? What is the even weirder deal with Morrigan?


	5. Embraced

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: discussion of canon typical racism and trauma. Canon typical violence. Kink negotiation, semi-explicit sexual content.

Cassian dreamt about her.  
  
Like clockwork- falling asleep as he so often did now over top of a desk, or sprawled on the libraries floor before the fire and waking, hopelessly alight. Ink smeared on his clenched hands, the occasional blood of a bitten lips, opening his eyes to breathe in cold embers to try and remember reality.  
  
He dreamt of the assassin. Utterly personal lurch in his chest temporarily overriding pain as Nesta precisely, _knowingly_ , stole Cassian’s own dagger. The twirl of it in her pale hand, the blood as she sank the blade unwavering into a faeries throat in his defense.  
  
Ya’shansri. _Red-glory-that-drips-off-a-blade-beautiful_ , the holy beloved of Cassian’s whole aching heart.  
  
In his dreams, just as in life, Nesta Archeron met his gaze without hesitation.  
  
Cassian dreamt. 

Cassian woke and in the single slice of time before work began, flew into the still sky to wait for the first break of dawn to day. For cool sunrise to meet silver sleeping light, a temporary zenith that only Cassian seemed to know. Precisely the minutes his sky would bloom the color of Nesta Archeron’s eyes.  
  
Mortal blue, winter dawn.  
  
It was almost peace-but it never stopped.  
  
Cassian dreamt her touch, waking to a heart pounding in erotic panic.  
  
Nesta taking him apart, breaking Cassian to simple pieces with just the cool touch of her hand. A bare foot against his calf. The tender skin of Nesta’s wrist brushed by his calloused fingertips as Cassian unfastened her jewelry. Seemingly endless, the silk slide of her long, long hair against his arm as Nesta turned her face toward his.  
  
Her exhale, his inhale.  
  
In Cassian’s dreams, as in life, there was nothing he would not give her.  
  
They’d never so much as kissed after the war- but without the fear, the wounded pride, this was Cassian’s world. The wind through the mountains, a crown he’d bear with relentless honor if not comfort, his people, his family, and Nesta: the mortar between every brick, the foundation of his feet on the ground, present in every choice, each heartbeat.  
  
So Cassian was horrified when he realized months and hundreds of letters later, that his library was part of the _Library.  
_  
He’d known about the books, been trying to think of a way to thank her every day since. An empty room of clerestory windows before the peace conference, a collection rich in every sort of knowledge imaginable since the day Nesta returned to Illyria.  
  
Cassian knew it had been her, spent late nights working beneath those windows in moonlight, as though he could feel her presence.  
  
But it took him _half a year_ to touch the mirror that hung in one corner.  
  
He liked to imagine his shock was defensible based on the fact that it was several hours before dawn, but even that didn’t prepare Cassian for the silver surface to ripple in place and transform, until half-asleep and surrounded by paperwork, he found himself looking at Nesta Archeron’s face.  
  
Shoulders bare, hair twisted back and stabbed through the with a pen, Nesta, like she’d been waiting all along, smiled.  
  
Cassian fell asleep enough times before the mirror in months after that Aayla started stashing tea in the library, an enormous cauldron of a kettle tucked by one of the fireplaces.  
  
This time, the view over Nesta’s shoulders wasn’t a sweeping Library landscape. Sunset light filled a round room of stone, every pale, comfortable inch gilded amber. Soft, serene and splendid as Nesta herself sprawled leisurely in the middle of it, what Cassian could only guess was her personal space.  
  
Cassian swallowed the thought that the dreamy light would show every inch of scar on his wings.  
  
He wanted her to count them. Wanted her fingers in his mouth, her hands in his hair her-  
 _  
He wanted to crawl across that golden room to her.  
_  
If Nesta cared that he was red and staring, it didn’t show.  
  
Seated on the floor with the sort of grace that made Cassian feel like he couldn’t swallow, Nesta gazed steadily back as Cassian looked and _looked,_ one hand fiddling with something green just barely out of view.  
  
“Is that your bedroom?”  
  
“Mhmm,” Nesta hummed, noise low. “It was a very long day.”  
  
Cassian’s fingertips bumped the frame of the mirror before he could _think-_ thoughts fractured between burying the heat of erotic dreams, and the sound of Nesta’s voice, both silk and iron, saying _long._

Clouds imprinted his skin, the scant edges of the filigree caught in a grip that wouldn’t quite hold, but still Cassian pressed. He’d known Nesta nearly half a decade now- one tempestuous aching summer in a whole immortal life, an important span of mortal youth- and never once heard her admit the slightest discomfort.  
 _  
Before_ \- before she called him down from the sky and the world broke to end- before, Cassian has always guessed. Acted on what might provide her comfort without admitting _why_ he wanted to or how he knew, without trying to really speak to her at all.  
  
Nesta Archeron, who he couldn’t hide a single thing from, even at the start.  
  
A hand in the slim dip of her back, the risk of a touch, the easy push and pull of infuriating Nesta also distracting her from how clearly she was hurting- what Cassian could see of Nesta that no one else seemed to bother watching.  
  
She saw him, _and it hurt_ \- but Cassian could see her too.  
  
Nesta Archeron, who’d stood resolute and burned him to the ground that very first day.  
  
Nesta Archeron, whose unbound hair swung like a war banner of silk as she tilted her head, watching Cassian.  
  
“You’re tired?” Cassian’s voice rasped.  
  
Nesta shrugged one pale shoulder, draped expanse of her gown flowing to slip low with the motion. “Mhmm.”  
  
Her eyes were on his wrist, the curling fire burst of tattooed lines that crowded Cassian’s pulse.  
  
He made himself feel that, the weight of her gaze. 

Not- _not_ the utterly charged thought that he’d seen _Lucien_ make that exact motion, that the cat-like grace was Helion’s familiarity and shared company coming through in Nesta’s comfort. Not that he could see the dip of her collarbone as it met her shoulder- not that her eyes were like _flint_ \- not-  
  
Nesta shifted, perfect posture asserting itself despite her cross-legged pose on the floor. She addressed her words not to him, but into the greenery that protruded into the right of Cassian’s view.  
  
“The Morrigan is well.”  
  
Sunlit on mist, her words burnt away every dreamy thought.  
  
“You were,” Cassian managed, “In Winter today, with Helion.”  
  
They didn’t see each other, face to face like this, as often as Cassian would like. But since he’d promised, Cassian had written. Every day, between the kingdom of Illyria and the Library letters arrived in bursts of flame, power borrowed from their recipient.  
  
Not always a single missive.  
  
Cassian found himself scrawling notes to Nesta at all hours of the day and night- once he knew she _wanted_ to hear from him, that he was allowed to reach, he couldn’t stop himself.

Thousands of leagues and two separate lives breached by questions: what did Nesta think of the Illyrian constitution? Would she have levied differently the farm aid sent to outlying communities of disenfranchised Night Court fae living where the war had made new borders? Did she taste his dreams last night? Could Cassian send her some of the honey gathered in the high mountains?  
  
Nesta always answered.  
  
It hadn’t been an official Day Court visit that brought them to Kallias’ frozen kingdom, but a request for aid. A secret, wrought only to the Library, that had worried Nesta from the onset, enough that Helion had come along to comfort the much younger High Lord through her investigation.  
  
Winter, where no children lived anymore.  
  
Nesta was _tired_.  
  
Cassian released the mirror, hand stinging in whorls of bruise-red. “I can be there in four hours.”  
  
To Helion’s capital, at least. The Library was everywhere and nowhere, the providence of Day and a kingdom all its own. Cassian didn’t know exactly where _there_ was, but Nesta had breakfast with Helion all the time, eating all his fruit and pretending she wasn’t Day’s Second, all the while preparing policy for the Sun Bright Council.  
  
She had to be nearby.  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
Cassian, already braiding away his hair, had to spit a pin back into his hand to answer. “ _Three_ hours. The flight is nothing, Nesta.”  
 _  
“Three hours,”_ Nesta repeated, featherlight, searing intensity, “To Day?”  
  
Aayla would try to follow him if he didn’t say something- one attempt on Cassian’s life, and the teen had decided he was completely incapable of taking care of himself. But _Nesta_ \- Nesta, Aayla thought, hung the moon and sang the sky. He didn’t need an honor guard to go after her- to be there for her. 

_“Cassian.”  
_  
The complex buckles of a flight jacket half on, Cassian looked up to find Nesta standing, her gauzy skirts clenched in one fist. She’d stepped closer to the mirror, golden light painting her memory- _dream_ \- loving as much as he did the ferocious curve of her cheek, the sharp line of her jaw.  
  
“I,” Cassian’s mouth had gone dry. “I want to be there. You don’t have to be alone. Unless, you want to?” The prospect was unexpectedly painful, but the fact of the matter was this: Cassian didn’t have a goddamn clue what he was doing. The desire to help _possessed_ him, flame bright fervent. “Or. I could bring Elain? It doesn’t have to be- uh, Lucien?”  
  
Gold and white, Nesta might as well have been a statue.  
  
“You want to fly three hours,” She said, slowly, “To speak to me about the Morrigan.”  
  
Cassian’s heart asserted itself with a painful jerk, beat thrumming in his ears. Too far away to know the fullness of what Nesta was feeling- he cursed himself regularly that a week had been enough for Cassian to lean on the brush of bare skin, the check of emotional temperature that served more as an anchor than guide.  
  
He could guess.  
  
“If she’s what upset you.”  
  
Nesta raised those silvered eyes to his, and all at once, struck. High Fae savage- _fucking glorious_ , Cassian’s racing heart insisted- snapped a hand through the mirror to grab Cassian’s arm and pull in a burst of strength.  
  
Strength that sent Cassian staggering, careening, suddenly surrounded by the sunset light of a home thousands of miles away.  
 _  
“Nesta?”  
_  
Blinking away silvered power, the world resolved itself. Nesta, in her comfortable tower room, a tenuous foot away, hand locked around his wrist. The mirror behind him gone, Cassian’s wings too broad for this space, spilling over a smooth banister into- _a tree?  
  
Like it was nothing, _Nesta reached up and brushed away a crimson bloom that fallen, caught between two wing bones.  
  
Cassian shuddered.  
  
So it was to his red, _red_ face that Nesta spoke, voice low with intent. “You were going to fly across _Rhysand’s entire kingdom,_ because I was alone?”  
  
Automatically, the urge to soothe pounding in his blood, Cassian found himself leaning down. He didn’t touch her- he wouldn’t, unless she asked, _reached,_ her hand on his arm so much more than enough- but curved around Nesta like shelter all the same.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Cassian smiled, just a little, watched blue trickle back into grey. “You said you had a long day. You went to Winter, to help with the aftermath of a massacre. I _wanted_ ,” He had to swallow, the abject honesty somehow so much harder- the bond whispered it, feelings leeched out of his skin, but Nesta deserved to hear it aloud. “I want to be here for you.”  
  
Nesta closed her eyes. _  
_  
Safer, the stillness of her body before him slowly relaxing, Cassian filled the silence. He didn’t know how to explain, but he’d try for her. “Do you remember that tea, Elain and you stole from the House of Wind’s kitchen?”  
  
“It was from the Illyrian mountains.”  
  
Cassian bit down on on his lips to hold in grin. “It was mine, you drank it all in a week. I brought back more, and I put it in everyones kitchens. And I, umm… made a deal with the bakers shop in the diamond quarter, to deliver those pastries you liked? I noticed you and Elain only seemed to eat at breakfast.”  
  
Nesta sighed. “I know.”  
  
“And I- _you knew?_ ”  
  
Nesta opened her eyes, brows high. “The wraiths might be playing handmaiden, but they’re _assassins._ They can’t make pastry. And you told Azriel what Elain liked when she stopped eating- Lucien actually owns a stake in their business now, he’s trying to bribe the chef into moving to Day.”  
  
His face might as well have been on fire. “I- yeah, that’s great.”  
  
Very, very slowly, Nesta leaned forward until her face was propped against Cassian’s chest, the still half unbound tangle of Illyrian flight leathers rucked under her chin. “I always knew, Cassian.”

It shouldn’t have been a perennial surprise that she was so _small-_ terrifying, but short enough that leaning against his chest Cassian could still comfortably look at her entire upturned face. He blamed that, the proximity that made his entire body sing, for what he blurted out.  
  
“That must have been confusing as fuck.”  
  
Nesta _laughed.  
_  
And Cassian could only watch, any embarrassment forgotten. Not Nesta’s laugh for people she didn’t like- a scoff that could peel paint- no trace of sarcasm, or the unyielding snark- laughter that burst like raindrops on his skin, summer in a sound that left Cassian mute.  
  
“You wanted to give me everything,” Nesta admitted, like it was _easy. “_ I never would have accepted anything less.”  
  
They’d been nothing, she’d always been _everything_ \- Cassian didn’t need her to explain.  
  
“Even when I wanted to kill you with my bare hands,” Nesta mused on, shadows in her voice more wry amusement than pain, “I always knew it was true.”  
  
Inexorably, horrifically- _he came here to comfort her_ \- Cassian felt a little like he was going to cry.  
  
Sounded like it- entirely choked, as he said, “It was true. It _is_ true. I”- Blue eyes flickered up to his, the silent, _what’s wrong?_ abruptly unbearable.  
  
Cassian wrapped both his arms around Nesta in a hug that involved his entire body. Only half to hide his embarrassing wet eyes- _she’s always known, he’d fucked it up, and still Nesta had known_ \- and half because he couldn’t continue speaking without the grounding weight of her.  
  
It was Nesta- _brave, perfect Nesta_ \- who said, slightly muffled, “Lets go backwards. What about the tea?”  
  
Cassian couldn’t look at her. Buried his whole face in her hair to breathe instead of speak, the haunting warm scent of almond oil a refuge. “I bought the entire harvest.”  
Her arms around his waist tightened, the tremor of a laugh rocking them both. Deftly, one cool hand slid beneath shirt and jacket, reach aligning with broad curve of Cassian’s ribs. Stroking.  
  
Burning, comforting lines.  
  
She waited for him to continue.  
  
And Cassian reminded himself he couldn’t convey the whole unfathomably embarrassing memory to her silently- _because he wanted_ \- Cassian wanted Nesta to know him, tangibly.  
  
“You don’t like tea,” He said finally, with only a little misery.  
  
Beneath his chin, Nesta had slowly been unfastening every bit of leather, tucked herself soundly against inked skin and silk. The _possession_ of it- the undeniable fact that Nesta touched him like his body belonged to her- _it did, it always had, he wished it could be more-_ a greater balm than her reply. 

“I like _some_ tea.”  
  
“You like the strongest black tea you can find, because it tastes the most like coffee.”  
  
Warm air ghosted over his clavicle as Nesta huffed. “It _was_ black tea, none of that floral wretchedness Feyre serves. Cassian, I liked it. That’s why I _drank all of it._ ” She leaned back, forced him from the refuge of her hair to glance upward. “Not that I know what to do with… sixty bushels?”  
  
“Eighty,” Cassian groaned.  
  
Nesta was grinning- Cassian could feel the shape of it against his _skin._ More than worth his embarrassment, prize enough it faded entirely.

The combined force of her wandering hands and Cassian’s slumped shoulders tumbled the flight jacket down his arms, snagged on wings as much as elbows. It should have been awkward- _laughable_ \- but close together as they were, his mind blankly racing, Nesta and Cassian moved in sync.  
  
Untangled, rewound, until Cassian, like Nesta herself, was stripped down to comfort, bathed in the light of the setting sun.  
  
“I could sell it,” Nesta mused, as though both her hands hadn’t crept back beneath his shirt, like Cassian’s entire body _wasn’t_ trying to blush at the nearly innocent contact of hands on his waist.  
  
Spark ignited, the glimmering echo of fire that Cassian had carried this entire time, burning ferocious. Fragile and world-ending- _Nesta was touching him._ He wanted to sink into it, to drift all the way to that place where words ceased to exist. Wanted to live in this moment and memorize it: here, speaking to her, this tie between them an acknowledged reality.  
  
Cassian swallowed another groan.  
  
“You could,” Cassian managed, with some humor, “But the point is- Nesta. I- I always want to be here. I want to learn.”  
 _  
I want to be what you need.  
_  
He’d lost count of the letters, treasured and tightly held every little detail gleaned. The elder Archeron sisters had adopted a brother- Cassian, who loved children, had absently started planning on teaching him the more accessible Illyrian swordplay. Nesta, spending a winter drinking Helion’s wine in greenhouses and spring walking fields with him. Naming the Library collections. Visits from Dawn’s scholars.  
  
The thousand things that made the life she’d built.  
  
He wanted to _know_ her- wanted Nesta to never think for a second that she couldn’t ask.  
  
“I’m probably going to do _many_ stupid things,” Cassian admitted, “But, Nes, just tell me if I’m doing it wrong. Tell me, and I’ll be here.”  
  
The light, dancing touch of her hands abruptly tightened, and Nesta looked up. Narrowed her eyes. “This what you wanted to tell me, when you saw me in Illyria.”  
  
It took Cassian a moment to reply.  
  
“Yes.”  
 _  
Yes- yes, but he’d never imagined he’d get the words out in a way that made sense- yes, but he’d lost his mind with longing and hugged her instead, needy and unsettled in his own skin, too much of him focused on her and only her-_

“You want-“ For once, he didn’t understand the light in her gaze, the furious brightness, “To come _here._ ”  
  
Careful as he’d been of her mortal body, Cassian smoothed a hand down the expanse of her spine. “Wherever you are. If you want me here, I’m here. You don’t need- I meant what I said, Nesta.”  
 _  
Even when you leave._

Wherever you go.  
 _  
The thing was-  
_  
The thing was that Cassian has spent his entire life _wanting._  
  
Early on, so very young he couldn’t have expressed the age correctly, sometime after he’d learned to fly alone but before it had been abundantly clear to every other bastard child thrown into the mud with him that Cassian was growing into something fearsome, something _other,_ a power that would tear things apart- some time, when Cassian was terribly young, he’d learned that only certain things could be wanted it a real, touchable way.  
  
He could fight with his bare hands for clothes, shelter, harsh basics of survival.  
 _  
Desire_ , Cassian learned, true wanting, was saved for ephemeral things: to know his mothers name. To make Azriel feel safe. To do better than those who had come before.  
  
To have a mate- _he had wished on the stars, young and furious, prayed in bloody sweat with dreaming promise_ \- that there could ever a be a person who’d want as much as Cassian wanted, to whom Cassian give and be nothing but his whole self.

He didn’t need to touch Nesta to love her. To possess her in any way.  
  
He simply _wanted,_ and it was the simplest thing in the world.  
  
Cassian loved her as Illyrians loved the sky.  
  
The truth of Nesta’s expression escaped her skin, the bond a threadbare murmur of her voice.  
 _  
You came here for me.  
_  
A truth, and Nesta wouldn’t take it back, the small wonder in those five words. She’d gone rigid again, steely spine adamite beneath Cassian’s hands. Waiting, the proud tilt of her face a dare.  
  
It hurt.  
Cassian had been stabbed and experienced less than the spasm of pain he could barely swallow- _Nesta didn’t think he’d come for her. Nesta didn’t expect it.  
_  
He’d made so many fucking mistakes, but Cassian wouldn’t look away now.  
  
Cassian met those terribly blue eyes, and smiled.  
 _  
Yes,_ Cassian said silently. _Yes, yes, always- yes.  
_  
He couldn’t really contain what it sounded like. No sorrow, no pain had room. It was Cassian yelling into the void, Cassian free falling through the stars, not even the night sky as vast as what he felt.  
  
Yes, _always yes_ , for her.  
  
Nesta breathed again. But twin spots of color had appeared high on her cheeks, even as she rolled her eyes at the exuberance playing out silently between them.  
 _  
Always is very, very long time,_ he heard. But the echo of memory joined it, lightening swift: Nesta’s snarl, _so mean it._ Swords at her feet, Cassian’s ravaged body mending beneath hands that hadn’t known what do the last time she’d found him bleeding, healing that didn’t have to hurt.  
  
Cassian picked Nesta right up off the ground, and sat.  
  
It was harder than it should have been. Nesta’s slim weight easy; a wild, heated pride as she lazily slung both arms around his neck, more balance than leverage, not bothering hold on.

But even neatly pinned to his back, Cassian’s wings didn’t fit in this room. Behind him, deceptive, probably fragile banister and flowering branches. Around him, soft, gauzy delicacy, an entire world to break or send toppling.  
  
Nesta’s laugh, sunshine utterly scathing, started again.  
  
Hunched and by effect curled around her body, Cassian blew hair out of his face to watch her, smiling so hard his face hurt from it. “This is your bedroom.”  
  
It could be no other place. Strung with the scent of fire, lush but bewilderingly _small_. Nesta, who’d been delicate even by human standards, a terrifyingly petite faery in a world built just for her.  
  
Cassian was uncomfortably certain that even trying to make himself smaller- refolding wings, letting the warm weight of Nesta’s slim body carry him to the ground- would end in, at the very least, breaking that elegant coffee table piled high with books.  
  
As is was, a rack of unfathomable glass… _somethings_ were in danger, merrily bubblinggold and silver liquid the scant twitch of a wing from toppling.  
  
Nesta, astride his hips, watching him try to shift with rap, laughing attention, seemed to detect the thought.  
  
A snap, and globes of glass and beakers vanished. A sharp rap against the floor, possible through a lean that froze Cassian in place, helpless in the face of the dip of her spine, the curve of Nesta’s waist, the bob of breasts he was _absolutely_ failing to ignore.  
  
Space went liquid and with dizzy power, expanded.  
  
The room wasn’t big, exactly, but everything was _bigger._ By six inches at the most, a bare minimum.  
  
He understood before Nesta settled once more, apparently comfortable leaning against his knees. “This is the _Library._ ”  
  
Golden light around them seemed to stretch endless as Nesta raised her eyebrows, gilded by the slow to set sun. No shadowed eyes or visible fatigue as her mortal face had worn, but Cassian could smell the edge of exhaustion, pale and indistinct.

“I’m the _Librarian_ ,” Nesta drawled, “Did you think I slept on a bookshelf?”  
  
Cassian had forgotten he could smile this hard.  
  
“I thought you’d want to know about Morrigan,” Nesta went on, resolute, like the words didn’t hurt, her steely spine straight.  
  
He grimaced. “I’m glad she’s okay. _.but_ ”-  
  
“But you never worried she wasn’t?”  
  
Cassian had been too furious to even think about her, a door shut that he had no intention of opening again. He shook his head, let Nesta’s sharp gaze take in the full brunt of the feeling. “I knew she was safe. Maybe in centuries I’ll be able to say I can forgive her for thinking it didn’t matter but- I care more about what she said to you.”  
  
Nesta’s mouth twisted, the ghost of a smile. “She’s trying to join the Winter Court.”  
  
She shifted as she spoke, grip creeping up his shoulder in leverage. It was a shock to be close, even now. Incandescent, that Nesta really _would_ touch him like this, as Cassian had dreamed for so long- possessive, in the most basic, fundamental way, a hand on the back of his neck.  
  
For much of his life the strength of his body had been all Cassian had to give. Comfort and safety and shelter- magic that Nesta would accept any of it.  
  
“Kallias won’t let that happen,” Cassian rasped, after he’d been silent for an embarrassingly long time.  
  
“Vivienne either, now that she’s High Lady,” Nesta agreed, “Do you know I killed her great-uncle?”  
  
As though Cassian could forget it, the glorious rush of realization that Nesta had snapped the neck of one of the most powerful faeries of Winter without a second thought, to protect _him._

He pressed his forehead to her shoulder.  
  
“We made them sign the peace treaty in blood. You gave him a faster death than he’d earned for himself.” Slow and painful, a traitors death, the rites of blood so rarely observed in this modern era. Ortharian would have been mad within a week, dead by the rise of the next full moon as the vitality in his veins transmuted.  
  
Blood to stone, Illyria as of old was Illyria again.  
  
Cool fingertips snuck into his hair, tangled in curls. but Nesta’s voice pieced the air. “That’s not why I did it.”  
 _  
Cassian.  
_  
She sounded tired even in his mind, the shape of his name agonizingly soft.  
  
He was thinking impossible things- Cassian wanted to hold her while she slept. Wanted to know if she’d sound just as velvet waking up. Wanted to carve a hole in his ribs and make his whole body her home, safe and warm.  
  
So he didn’t immediately follow the wry, slightly frustrated tone of his name repeated, flowing through the bond, until a gentle hand, tiny but iron, tilted up his chin.  
  
Soft as a dream, Nesta pressed her mouth to his.  
  
Cassian groaned against her lips, melting into the kiss like sugar on heat. He wanted to give her this- the way it should have happened, without blood and pain, nonetheless destroyed by the simple fact of her touch.  
  
It took no time to turn heated.  
  
No time at all until Cassian was making helpless noises into her mouth, Nesta’s grip bruising, unbreakable.  
 _  
Perfect._  
  
When the need to breathe finally forced them apart, the honeyed light around them had fractured into flame. Red, pink, vibrant as day made one last attempt to paint over Nesta’s pale skin.  
He sagged into the hand she’d raised to his cheek. It was Nesta- Nesta, who knew what it meant, Nesta who’d started it last time too- Nesta, whose vicious little smile was so triumphant  
  
 _Cassian’s heart was going to burst_ \- Nesta, who leaned her forehead against his.  
  
Room to breathe, together.  
  
He wanted to hug her. Knew with a quiet, raw sort of awe that he could, and did.  
  
This time it was Nesta who softened. Unwinding by degrees, like it was difficult to allow herself to slump, a tension Cassian hadn’t even known was there until it evaporated in his arms.  
“You’re tired,” Cassian repeated, fighting to swallow down what he was feeling. The indistinct noise that was Nesta’s response made him brave enough to go on. Sleepy. Undignified. “Can I stay?”  
  
A single laugh, huffed, like she couldn’t help it. “ _Yes._ ”  
  
He took a minute to memorize the syllable, winding one hand in her hair.  
  
Too long, Nesta’s grin pressed against his skin. “Cassian.” He honestly wanted to groan just at the sound of his own name, a problem so much as the maelstrom of thought he knew she could hear and feel. “ _Cassian._ Tell me what you want. _”  
_  
The words weren’t right exactly, but Cassian could also fathom what she meant: _tell me what you want to do. Tell me what you intend, with that blush.  
_  
“In the interest of less… tea related incidents?”  
  
He had to let go of her. To lean back and away, space enough to make sense and say what mattered. Because she’d asked, and Cassian would aways give Nesta what she asked for.  
“I don’t have any expectations,” Cassian promised, painfully honest. In the red light her hair was nearly dark as his, and he frankly wished he could just bury his face in it. “We don’t need to do anything.”  
  
Her voice was clarion in silence. _It’s okay to ask._ _  
_  
“Have you eaten?” Cassian hedged. She shook her head, waiting. The words tumbled out in a heady rush, a little too rough and true. “Can I cook for you? I want to feed you. Make you come. Take care of you. Hold onto you. Be here when you wake up. Stay.”  
  
Nesta, with the grace that always been hers human and fae, rose from Cassian’s lap.  
  
For a thunderous moment, Cassian truly thought he’d fucked it up again _,_ watching from the floor as she walked across the room. Until Nesta twisted, one foot on the stairs, to skate bright blue eyes over his face.  
  
“Kitchen’s on the ground floor.”  


***

Nesta Archeron had never tacitly accepted anything in her life.  
  
If she was saying yes- if she was, as she was now, silently going along, pleasure hovering around her mouth that wasn’t quite a smile, something feline and _radiant-_ it was because she wanted to.  
  
Nesta wanted _exactly_ what Cassian had offered.  
  
He could feel it.  
  
The high of that reality had carried Cassian downstairs. Not that by the time he reached the kitchen he had any idea how he’d actually managed to get his wings, much less shoulders, down the airy passage without breaking tree branches.  
  
Heart pounding, _alive, alive, alive_ under her blue gaze, Cassian moved automatically. Wondered in an idle, detached way a thousand leagues distant, if Nesta would forgive him if he really did die right there, dropping at her feet in sheer anticipation.  
  
Cassian was glad for any outcome that brought him low before her.  
  
But he’d forgotten, somewhere between primal urges and the lump in his throat of _love,_ that none of the Archerons could cook _._  
  
Nesta’s kitchen was beautiful, as all things she’d chosen were. Green and white, gleaning in ruthless cleanliness from the pale floor to the copper kettle whose sheer size made Cassian grin.  
  
There was an entire cabinet filled with coffee and tea- great sacks of it, rich scents all the way from chocolatey depth to strange acrid smoke. A single enormous glass jar of black Illyrian tea. A canister that stung his nose and proved to be filled with a mix of tea and unrecognizable purple flowers that Nesta, perched on the counter as though it were a throne, plucked neatly from his grasp. 

“That one is _not_ safe for consumption,” She breathed, twisting the lid back into place.  
  
At his raised brows she only smiled, and handed it back to him to put away. Didn’t explain, knew Cassian would take the silent request.  
  
He took the opportunity of having his back turned to swallow. To pretend, for even second, that he _could_ calm down.  
  
There was no reason in the world for this moment to feel familiar. They’d shared dozens of meals; fighting with a single witness as embarrassed as Cassian himself was at the flush over his skin, endless horrid family dinners at Feyre’s behest, shitty journey bread in the cold mud of an Illyrian war camp.  
  
Nothing like this.  
  
But _here-_ in this tower of a home that it could not be clearer was built in every way for one, at the heart of Nesta’s kingdom Cassian couldn’t imagine any Illyrian before him had ever escaped the Night Court’s purview to visit, standing in akitchen that didn’t even seem to possess _knives-_ Cassian was as rooted as he had ever been.  
  
Settled.  
  
Like this had happened a thousand times before and would a thousand times again: rolling up his sleeves to the buzzing song of adrenaline as Nesta’s gaze caught on his hands, entangled with promise inked up his forearms.  
  
Cassian, pulling back his hair. Nesta, an absurdly graceful dream even sitting on a counter, dangling bare legs crossed, skirt rucked up into a mess around her.  
 _  
Home._  
  
She laughed outright at the look on Cassian’s face when he finally found knives, tucked in the back of a drawer beside the sink.  
  
It took only half a glance to see what holding one would tell him, but Cassian picked it up anyway. Perfect balance of Dawn-forged assassins steel perched on his fingertip, Cassian raised the blade to eye level between them, and shook his head. “How do you _live_ like this?’  
  
Nesta only tilted that proud face, eyes bright. Purred right back, “Quite well.”  
  
Neatly flipping the knife into his grip, Cassian spun the blade. Leaned beside her sidelong, just out of reach. “Am I going to find _anything_ edible in any of those cabinets?”  
  
Indolence in the fling of her wrist, Nesta gestured over Cassian’s shoulder. “There’s bread. Somewhere.”  
  
He almost gave in. Caught her hand, brought it to his mouth. Kissed her right then, asinine kitchen having rendered Nesta within captivating height, face to face. But a larger part of Cassian recognized that this was a _challenge_ , and moreover; Nesta was enjoying it almost as much as he was.  
  
He handed her the throwing knife, and turned back to his quest.  
  
There _was_ bread. Along with the beaker collection from upstairs, still bubbling without oversight, joined by a water clock so transparently cursed Cassian could scent the blood magic on it. A shamefully great collection of spices slowly aging into dust unopened. The first vial he uncorked was bookbinding agent, but the second, warm and sweet, proved to be probably the highest quality vanilla he’d ever held.  
  
The sun slipped below the horizon, and Cassian made breakfast.  
  
Butter, bread dredged in egg and cinnamon, a pan he was sure had never before experienced heat. He could had done it with his eyes closed- fortunate, as every bit of Cassian’s awareness was trapped by the warm weight of Nesta’s eyes, settled on his shoulders like a physical touch.  
  
He hoped she knew she _could_ touch.  
  
It wouldn’t have even been a stretch. Five inches back, and Cassian’s hips would bump her knees. Less, to reach his wings.  
  
Cassian could feel her looking.  
  
It was a strategic mistake to turn, to look back.  
  
Nesta had scooted to the bend of that marble counter, slanted to prop her elbow on the smooth wood surface of the cabinet full of coffee, chin in her hand. She _was_ watching him. She was doing absolutely nothing else but watching him.  
  
Cassian snapped his face forward like whiplash.  
  
Aloud, Nesta snickered.  
  
In his mind, in silent endless warmth of the bond, she offered with ruthless honesty: _beautiful.  
  
“What?” _Cassian coughed, noise buried in the sizzle of flinging a not patiently enough shaken off piece of bread into the pan. Egg mix dripped onto the hot surface of the stove and burnt.  
  
Cassian half thought it would have blackened just as fast had it dripped onto the heat of his burning skin.  
  
But Nesta’s voice was amused, cool and steady as rushing water. “You don’t think I’m wrong,” She dragged out, thoughtful, quizzical, “But you do think I’m… _lying?_ But you’re also very sure I never lie.”  
  
The fever pitch in his mind, effortlessly parsed.  
  
Before he could answer memory bloomed. Not the sharp, fast, shrapnel of feeling she sometimes expressed, but a purposeful picture. The first time they’d ever actually been alone. Cassian, off balance in the worst, most stupid way by her _everything._ Nesta, truly angry and deeply suspicious. _Faery magic_.  
  
Cassian spun.  
  
“I have been embarrassed about that for _five years,_ thanks.” He said, waving the spatula. Embarrassed and deeply, absolutely, ashamed.  
  
“Because I actually got you?”  
  
She was _delighted.  
_  
It did nothing to help the incredible shade of red Cassian was sure had overtaken his entire body. “Because I _licked_ you.”  
  
Just a flicker: _it wasn’t that bad_. Endlessly fond. _It was worse.  
_  
“It was the very least of what you were thinking about.”  
  
Cassian dropped the spatula, fumble half managed as he caught it with his other hand. There was absolutely nowhere to hide.  
  
He gave in instead the urge to drift back across the minuscule distance to her, face to face with the gorgeous, smug pleasure all over her expression.  
  
“When,” Cassian managed, “Did you know _that?_ ”  
  
She shrugged. Leonine, a ripple of sliding silks and pale skin. “Then.”  
  
Nesta took pity, reached right out and grabbed a handful of Cassian’s shirt to pull him close. He didn’t even think about the way she let him grab her bare thigh, the singular, appreciative way Nesta moved into the warmth of his body  
  
“You knew when you were _human?”  
_  
She breathed a laugh. “Why did you think I thought I was _ensorcelled_?” Nesta drummed gentle fingertips on his collarbone, just above where the curls of tattooed lines began. Precisely in sync with them. “The magical theory is that the bond is always the bond. That the snap is almost _artificial,_ awareness forced of a thing that you weren’t meant to be heedless of to start with. Evolutionary tactic. A survival trait.”  
  
“So you can’t ignore it,” Cassian muttered, dryly.  
  
“That’s why it’s so random,” Nesta went on, like Cassian wasn’t still absolutely lost on the sound of her voice saying _the bond,_ “It just happens, no clear trigger. Because it’s always there.” She smirked. “Unless you happen to be in a life threatening situation.”  
  
“So,” Cassian drawled, eyeing her carefully, “If you’d stabbed me that day like you clearly wanted to, it would have happened _then?”  
_  
The delight had never faded, but he was a little bowled over by what Nesta wasn’t trying to hide. She was _happy_ \- to be talking to him, to be having this conversation, just as much as he was. 

“If I managed to nick an artery, maybe.”  
  
Cassian shook his head.  
  
“No,” He said, stroking the warm line of her leg, hitched around his hip. “You would have just gone for my throat.”  
  
She liked that. “You would have let me.”  
 _  
I would have begged for it.  
_  
He couldn’t reel back in the words, had no inclination to as clear interest overtook the amusement in on Nesta’s face.  
  
“I would have liked that too.”  
  
From the moment Nesta had pulled him into her home Cassian might as well have been smoldering in his own skin. Had no knowledge that the fire was _banked_ until greater heat raged up the bond. A lightening strike, a prairie fire- unmitigated, an ocean of complex, tangled desire.  
  
Nesta Archeron, just like his dreams, looked back without hesitation.  
  
Still- still, still, still, the way High Fae bodies instinctively reacted to challenge, the moment before explosive violence, powerful motion. On Nesta it was no threat. It was a promise, bloody, and  
  
Cassian wanted it carved into his skin. _  
_  
Until smoke, undeniable, wafted right in their faces.  
  
Cassian’s automatic dive for the pan was stilled by Nesta rocking forward, the burst of laughter right against his skin. He watched over his shoulder as the whole smoldering mess vanished, burnt sugar acrid scent along with it.  
  
Arm wrapped gentle around her shaking shoulders Cassian said, mildly, “I liked that pan.”  
  
A huff of breath right against his neck, the very faintest sting of teeth on Cassian’s pulse. “It’s part of a set.”  
  
It was automatic to tilt his head, to bare his throat.  
  
Nesta followed the motion, so hungry Cassian could feel it crawling in his own veins. He swallowed. Said, because he couldn’t seem to stop himself, “Did you actually buy them?" 

Gasped, at the press of her mouth. The faint squeeze of her leg hooked around him, muscle tense beneath flawless skin.  
  
“Birthday gift,” Nesta purred. “Azriel and Lucien.”  
 _  
Cassian snarled._  
  
Cassian groaned, more physically embarrassed than he had, perhaps, ever been. Nesta had smoothly detached from his neck to raise questioning, slightly mocking brows. Not scared, not offended, but apparently, decidedly inclined to tease him mercilessly.  
  
She tapped his mouth. “You don’t even have sharp teeth.”  
  
He kissed the upraised hand, brought it to his overheated cheek.  
  
“ _Yes_ , all actual throat ripping out is your job.”  
  
Nesta grinned, before her mouth twisted into a delicate, beautiful little sneer. “Messy.”  
  
“Not _bloody_?”  
  
“Anyone we need dead doesn’t deserve my _mouth.”  
  
“Do I?”  
_  
“Maybe.” She looked him up and down, brazen as a touch. “Weren’t you feeding me?”  
  
His heart swelled, instincts at tangled cross purpose. He wanted to remain in this exact moment- Nesta saying _we_ , Nesta saying _the bond_. To drop to his knees and beg her to touch him however she desired, to do anything so long as Nesta still wanted him afterward, that he could still have that soft hand on his cheek.  
  
Cassian let go of her leg, unwound out of her embrace.  
  
Plate retrieved from beside the stove, entire stack mismatched and strangely beautiful. A fork Cassian had the lurching sense was inexplicably solid silver, maple syrup, toast that had already been cooked and thus survived the inferno.  
  
Sugar and _wanting_ , Nesta’s blue eyes on his face.  
  
He held out a bite.  
  
She took it.  
  
The idea that food had anything to do with bonding was _purely_ ceremonial. It didn’t mean anything- outdated, sexist in a way that seemed particularly absurd to Cassian raised on Illyrian values- but nonetheless, the sense of timelessness, both heat and the haze home that would never cease melded beneath Cassian’s ribs.  
  
There was nothing familiar- the way she rolled her eyes when he wouldn’t let her steal the fork, but nonetheless took the next bite he raised to her lips. Letting him care. Drawing him even closer.

It was _everything_ familiar- love a sacrament, proof of purpose provided in every physical way as Cassian had grown up dreaming of.  
  
It was Nesta. Reeling him back in with that bare leg, skirts tossed to one side, pressing his hip like it was nothing- because it _was. Because Nesta knew he’d move. Because Nesta wanted him there.  
_  
Simple.  
  
Easy.  
 _  
Everything.  
_  
He kissed her, fork rattling against the countertop as it fell. Cinnamon, blood, the heat of Nesta’s _instant,_ grasping reach. She’d gotten his neck better than Cassian had thought, iron on her tongue like love.  
  
He groaned at the taste, at the handful of curls Nesta caught in her grip without an ounce of shame or hesitation.  
  
Pulling him down. Holding him in place. Cassian had dreamt this so many times it was a hysteria, seething on the edge of his mind, to wonder if this was even _real_.  
 _  
Real, real, real-_ Nesta was the one saying it _,_ flung between them, grounding as the sound of her heartbeat. _Did you really think?_  
  
Cassian had really thought- _that this would never happen._ That he’d been lucky enough to have what had happened thus far. Her smile, her laugh, that he could breathe the silence with her, hold Nesta in his arms.  
 _  
Mountains and sky. Ya’shansri. You meant it.  
_  
A parable, a truth, meaning in words of the wind- ya’shansri, holy beloved. Ya’shansri, red glory. Did the sky not love the peaks, did the mountains not reach for the sky?

She held on like she’d never let go, and Cassian could only match it. Out of his mind from the slide of Nesta’s hungry mouth, the heat of her legs around him present through flimsy silk. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, uncertain for once in his long life with the natural motion of his body.  
  
Nesta laughed against his lips, Nesta curled into his chest until Cassian had to hold on to keep her balanced, alight all over again at the humming _happiness_ , hunger, he could translate touching her skin.  
  
Cassian crushed her against him.  
  
Sure for a second he’d been _too much_ as Nesta pulled away- but the terrible face lapsed into a yawn so wide her jaw popped, flashing sharp little white teeth.  
  
Cassian was laughing, the sound only slightly muffled by his cheek against her brow, before he could stop himself. “I’ve never- you look like a _kitten._ ”  
  
“ _Do not_ get used to it,” Nesta said, tight grip tugging his shirt in emphasis, “I haven’t slept in a week.”  
  
He absorbed that. Cassian had been operating on the basis that Nesta’s needs were some muddle of fae and Illyrian- physically stronger than high fae, but _magical._ Cassian could stay awake for maybe three days before it got bad, kill with his bare hands for forty-eight hours straight, but half a fortnight would have rendered him comatose.  
  
A kiss at her hairline, nosing into soft flyaway waves. “Do you want to go to bed?”  
  
Complicated twitch of Nesta’s expression, too fast to parse, replaced quickly as it came by that sharp-edged smile. “You should carry me.”  
  
His grin matched hers as he swung her off the counter. Cassian made it about a step before he paused, and buried his face in her neck. The trickle of Nesta’s thoughts went something like this: _carry me everywhere, really.  
  
“Nes.”  
_  
She laughed again, louder than he’d heard yet. Beautiful. Would have joined her if her hadn’t been so senselessly turned on that walking to the stairs was actual effort.  
  
Whatever Cassian had done to avoid the tree the first time failed with the teasing bundle of Nesta in his arms, bumping into branches as they went, flowers raining down.  
  
So it was a bright-eyed, unusually mussed Nesta Cassian set down on her tiny pale bed, bloody red blooms falling in her wake.  
  
She eyed him, standing there at the edge of the mattress. Cassian had thrust his hands in his pockets to stop from _reaching,_ rocked back on his heels with some semblance of dignity like he wasn’t falling apart already. 

He wanted her to look- _he wanted to belong to her_ \- he wanted to set himself on fire to stop feeling like just this, _this,_ this happy, perfect moment, left him flayed raw.  
  
Nesta cocked her head, thoughtful.  
  
The bed curtains vanished, gossamer silk evaporating. The bed got, if only incrementally, bigger.  
  
Nesta pulled Cassian down.  
  
An ordinary moment that had no reason to feel so natural or important; tossing off extraneous layers, Cassian’s boots now lightly sticky from the plate he’d elbowed off the counter and Nesta vanished before it hit the ground, the serpentine twist of the necklace Cassian unfastened before Nesta tossed it, a cupped handful of gold, onto the bedside table.  
  
They curled together.  
  
He dreamt, but Cassian’s dreams had never managed to give him this. Gentle, insistent hands that asked and gave in the quiet, the pale curve of Nesta’s beautiful body as she pulled him to pillow his head on her chest.  
  
Soft benediction, her hand sweeping through curls.  
  
He understood, but only after she spoke. “You’re shaking.”  
 _  
Cassian. You’re okay.  
_  
His whole body was trembling, the current of it rocking up his spine. 

“I want _so much_ ,” Cassian murmured. “I want everything and _you are-_ Nesta, you overwhelmingly _everything.”_

_You can have everything.  
_  
The words burned, might as well have been new ink punched into his skin. But mystifying, aloud, Nesta said, “I know that what was said about you in Velaris isn’t true.”  
  
What was said about Cassian was what was said about all Illyrians- power and savagery, beauty that was _risk_. 

One of the two Illyrians who were ever allowed the leave their mountains at all.  
 _  
What he wanted with Nesta-  
_  
But Nesta wasn’t thinking about swallowed shame, Cassian’s youthful pride. She was thinking about _books._  
  
Inked columns and contracts, time captured on paper, bound and shelved behind her father’s desk. Utterly, terribly young, her and Elain called to silent attendance, forced into hated frilly gowns. Warehouses by the sea, an enormous manor where she knew every eavesdropping corner to hide from a governess imported to soften her edges.  
  
Trade of value an Archeron girl- her chastity.  
  
“Sometimes,” Cassian said, to the dip of Nesta’s collarbone, beloved space between graceful neck and proud shoulder, “I think your father died too quickly.”  
  
Nesta was thinking of the burnt out Archeron estate, of Velaris in ashes of lightening struck power. 

“It was _easier,_ ” Cassian continued, turning into her neck, “To just not have…what I wanted. To be what was expected, at least a little.”  
 _  
I never trusted anyone enough. I never- I have never loved anyone like you.  
_  
The ceaseless motion of her hand in his hair had stilled. 

“High Fae women are _idiots_ ,” Nesta snapped. She pulled, not enough to really be felt, until Cassian opened his eyes. Tilted back his head to meet her burning gaze. “Why would I want anything else?”

One cool fingertip beneath his jaw, Nesta tilted his head further, until Cassian’s heart began to race. Until it was a stretch, pulling at his ability to breathe.  
  
“ _Cassian_ ,” She said, harshness that wasn’t harsh, anger that was all affection, relentless and straining as the heat pounding beneath his skin, “I love this.”  
 _  
You, all of you._  
  
She truly was angry at the thought- that someone had looked at him as he was, bloody hands honed for war, and said, _you cannot have this_. _You are made for something else and it is not gentle._

Incised. 

Nesta’s rage had a twin, and it lived in Cassian’s heart- the very thought of her human life, expectations that might have crushed her over decades. How anyone could look at the glory of this woman- smart and beautiful, clever and constant- and want her _smaller_. Softer. 

For her, he said, “I don’t want you to be anything else.”  
  
And Nesta smiled.

Cassian could _feel_ it, but it was abruptly unbearable not to experience it, to be able to look easily upon Nesta’s whole face. Gentle rearrangement, with hands that ever so slightly shook. She moved with him like it was nothing, rolling on her side to curl into a ludicrously downy pillow.  
  
Nesta Archeron, less than half-dressed, cozy in her bed, watching him with desire bright eyes and a mouth half smiling that Cassian had reddened himself with kisses.  
 _  
Wanting._ Absolutely nothing hidden.  
  
The words came unbidden.  
  
Cassian murmured around his suddenly dry mouth. “I don’t think I can ever be rough with you.”  
  
The slightest recalibration of fantasy, just a little more true; utter acceptance and the force of Nesta’s desire like a tidal wave.  
  
“You don’t mind that I?”  
  
The gesture of her hand meant nothing, but Cassian caught it anyway, brought her palm to his mouth. He understood her. “ _No_. No, I want that.” Easy, so impossibly easy. Nesta who enjoyed, held onto control- Cassian, who dreamt of the gift of giving it to her.  
  
Nesta didn’t look away, steady face across a tiny pillowed valley. “Not always.” 

_I don’t always need it with you, I think.  
_  
Cassian slipped, and the bond rushed like a great dam had collapsed. Cassian, who for most of his life had existed in whole sum of value of his body. Strength and ferocity- and that too belonged to her, just another piece of the love that burned through Cassian and made him stronger.  
  
Cassian, who for so many lovers had been exactly what they expected of him.  
  
A great cascade of memory, aching as a bruise: Morrigan who had wanted him, because she’d wanted to have an Illyrian of legend. Faeries who found Cassian beautiful, but also looked at that beauty waiting for some brutality beneath to be unleashed, who sought it out.  
  
Abruptly, jarring in this little cloud of a bed and impossible haven, Nesta was so angry Cassian could taste it.  
  
“I _hate_ the fucking Night Court.”  
  
He kissed her wrist, met her glittering gaze until Nesta wasn’t breathing through gritted teeth. He didn’t know how to explain that it was different: people had treated him like he was less his entire life, but the idea of kneeling before Nesta was to feel _precious_. Loved and cherished. “You never said Illyrian like it was a slur. Not once.”  
  
“I called you a bastard.”  
  
Cassian smiled. “Not when you knew what it meant. You were mortal, Nesta. You know I said stupid shit too. I’ve never apologized for that.”  
  
She shifted closer, legs entangled. “Yes, you did. When you were bleeding out in Illyria.”  
  
“Which time?”  
  
A tiny, furious noise. “The time before I had any idea how to heal internal bleeding and _lit you on fire_.”  
  
“I deserved it,” Cassian breathed a laugh, “Will you think I’m a very, very bad man if I tell you how many dreams I’ve had about that night?”  
  
“That depends, are the dreams about _dying?”_  
  
Careful, slow, Cassian tucked the burgeoning cascade of Nesta’s hair back over her shoulder. Off her face, marveled and lingered over one sharp cheek. “You saved me. You made me _believe_ \- and I wanted-“  
  
“Me to hurt you,” Nesta murmured, a whisper of heat. “To hold my hand. To see my face. For my hands on you to be pain and adoration and something wicked.” She met his gaze, arched a brow at Cassian’s anxious expression. “Cassian. _I lit you on fire._ ”  
  
Thumb pressed under one blue eye, he stroked her cheek. Rolled over the words before he said them. “It felt like love. Both times.”  
 _  
You saved me, over and over again. Healed me.  
_  
Nesta leaned into his palm, for all that it could not have been a comfortable twist off the pillow. “I learned what I was doing after the first time.”  
  
Fast as she’d moved before, but the whole motion carefully telegraphed in her body- Nesta rolled and Cassian caught her, pulling by her hips to settle warm, perfect weight on top of him.  
  
She sat up. Skimmed over where the scar of Cassian’s almost assassination would have lain if she’d allowed one to form, muscle rippling in her wake. “ _So._ No fire.”  
  
Cassian laughed, hands running up her legs. “No… bruises. I _can’t_ ”-  
  
Her smile was incredulously, distinctly foreign soft. Nesta held out her arm. When he didn’t move Nesta quite literally picked up his hand and wrapped it around her wrist. “You won’t hurt me. Even if you…were distracted, you couldn’t. Squeeze.”  
  
He did as she asked, slender bones held tight beneath his grip. Attentive, callouses rasping over delicate skin.  
  
With a huff more like the way they’d fought when they first met, Nesta shook off his hand, grabbed it, and leaned down. Pinned Cassian’s wrist over his head like precisely eight hundred fantasies he’d had of her, and waited, looming with a smirk.  
  
Cassian understood at once.  
  
Lifted his other arm, heart in his throat, and actually tried once she’d caught hold. The sword arm that had saved the North- Cassian, who’d been so strong in his youth that without Azriel for comparison would have been ruled both savior and _monster_ \- Cassian, whose nightmares had long worn the shape of her fragile, mortal body- Cassian, who couldn’t break Nesta Archeron’s hold.  
  
He groaned, the noise torn from his throat. “ _Sweetheart.”_ Cassian was shaking his head, suddenly frantic, “Don’t, don’t let go.”  
  
She watched his face for a long moment, judging, careful, if Cassian meant the words. It was only then that Nesta’s grip tightened, that she dipped low to kiss him. Wet and slow, her mouth so soft it felt a little like something inside him was breaking.  
 _  
It felt so good._  
  
Her weight on his ribs. The press of Nesta’s entire body. The greater, unfathomable weight of her regard heady as any wish. The exquisite feeling of being trapped.  
  
Hers- all hers, to have.  
  
By the time Nesta turned her attention to his neck, murmuring soft appreciation for the noises slipping from his lips as she went, Cassian felt drunk. Unmoored. Like he could float all the way from himself and be _safe._  
  
Nesta sank her teeth into his neck like a promise.  
  
Nesta let go of his wrists and Cassian didn’t move, already half lost on dreamy pleasure. Staying where she put him.  
  
He didn’t feel the pain. It was something better, transmuted into sheer overwhelming heat, blinding.

He came down to her cool hand on his face, tracing the shape of one brow and then the next, over and down, the curve of his cheek, the bow of his full mouth, lingering along the way on the tiny flecks of scars that remained, the story of Cassian’s long, violent life.  
  
She’d wiped away his tears too.  
  
“ _Shit,_ ” Cassian breathed, “I’m sorry”-  
  
“Why,” Nesta murmured, _soft,_ but in a voice that had to be listened to, “Would you need to be sorry?”  
 _  
You can cry. You can say whatever you want. You’re beautiful. You’re safe.  
_  
Cassian belatedly remembered he could, in fact, move his arms and did, to wrap her in a shaky embrace. Smiled a little, beneath her hand. “Probably isn’t what you wanted.”  
  
Nesta raised one vicious eyebrow. “You’re what I want. Did I ask you for something different?”  
  
“No, but”-  
  
“Cassian.”  
  
He could barely look at her, saying his name like that. It made him want to bare his throat, rip out his heart for her. _Vital_ , so much that Cassian began to feel just a little dreamy at the sound. “I promise I’m not going to cry every time we have sex.”  
  
Nesta shrugged, before curling closer. 

Waited for him to be mostly present, Cassian noticed in a far away sense, before her weight settled back on his ribs.

“What’s wrong with crying? You think it’s a weakness, to enjoy yourself?”  
  
Answer came in the silence. _It’s a gift. You’re a gift.  
_  
Nesta made a distinctly inelegant noise, before rolling her eyes. She kissed his nose. Cassian loved it, to an absolutely unbearable degree. Would have hid his face, if it hadn’t meant losing the sight of her. “If I’m safe with you, you’re safe with me.”  
  
And wasn’t that, in the end, what absolutely tore Cassian apart? 

It was _real-_ and he was wanted. He was safe. _Nestas.  
_  
“You are.” She said, “Cassian. Tell me what felt good.”  
  
Horrified, fear could force out words. But like this- her knee to his ribs, the distracting appeal of her hand as it slipped from his lips to lie over Cassian’s pulse, he had to struggle for focus. Nesta asking should have made it worse- but it didn’t, it didn’t, under her hands Cassian felt _perfect._ “No one’s ever,” Cassian shook his head, heaving breaths, but Nesta remained patient. Close. Somehow knew not to move and make air come any easier. “Been able to hold me down.”  
  
A nod, the reward of a gentle stroke down the column of his throat. The small embarrassing noise Cassian couldn’t hold in was met with a squeeze- not enough, not enough, he wanted more, but enough that he remembered what he’d been asked.  
  
“Pain is good. I liked…” Nesta was always devastating, but like this- Cassian had to close his eyes. “When you boxed me in. When it’s hard to breathe.”  
 _  
I feel incredible. Do you do you do you?  
_  
Like before, again, the careful pull through his hair, playing with the spring of curls like Cassian was something precious. _  
_  
“Cassian. Look at me.”  
  
She could feel the direction his thoughts were turning, he knew it. Could hear every straining heartbeat, muddled understanding. Hovered close to eye him as she said, with careful distinction,  
  
“You feel good. Taste good.”  
  
And Nesta kissed him with her red-stained lips, sheer bloody sacrament a fact between them. How Illyrian’s sealed vows. How High Fae knew love. Cassian could cry- Nesta could do whatever the hell she wanted to him. They’d both enjoy it.

“Can I?”  
  
He didn’t need to finish the sentence, words stopped by the tide of Nesta’s eyes, blue in pleasure.  
  
“Like this,” Said Nesta, and pulled him upright.  
  
Astride his lap, the slightest advantage of height a thrill that grew with the steadying hand around his neck. Fuzzily, Cassian placed his fingers over hers, held Nesta’s palm to his throat. Swallowed one more time before he managed to meet her eyes in question.  
  
Soft- how was it that she was so soft like this? Soft like light was soft, like water, like wind, unstoppable, Nesta met his silent plea with a nod.  
  
Lips brushing his ear, warmth enveloped Cassian as she leant close to whisper. “Show me how you’ll tap out.”  
  
He squeezed her thigh gently. Three times, three words. He wondered if she could hear them too.  
  
“ _Good_ ,” Nesta purred. “And if you want more?”  
  
The thought, when it came, was so loud in the bond Cassian might as well have said it aloud. Not shouted but spoken, truth laden like power in each syllable, Cassian’s voice that could bind the wind itself.  
 _  
I want whatever you’ll give me.  
_  
Her sucked in breath, the storm stilled. Fingers tangled together, Nesta trapped his hand and tapped just once. Waited- _and Cassian swore he could taste ozone, sparks, the still dangerous air before a sky burst-_ for him to repeat the motion, for Cassian to understand.  
  
And just like that, all at once, Cassian couldn’t breathe.  
  
It swept away everything- the taste of tears, the lingering nerves, worry and fear. There was only this, his heart pounding with panic that was every bit pleasure. The resounding thought- he was hers, hers, _hers.  
_  
She let go, but Cassian didn’t, just present enough to keep her hand trapped against his neck.  
  
Gasping for air, _floating,_ Cassian spent the break Nesta gave him to breathe impeding the process entirely with how badly he wanted to bury his whole face in her chest. She let him, pulled him close.  
  
Cherished, precious.  
  
He didn’t manage to ask for more aloud, but Nesta understood. Her grip tightening to bruising force without moving Cassian, his forehead propped on her clavicle.  
  
Wonderingly, that second time, Cassian had the presence of mind to trace her hand. To feel beneath his palm where her fingertips bit into his skin, taking, _claiming_ -  
  
Nesta let go, and Cassian realized the heat on his face was tears, streaming down his cheeks.  
  
He shook his head before she could do more than open her mouth, “No, I’m- _please_ -“ Cassian tapped her leg. “I feel”-  
  
He felt like he was falling apart, falling into something safe and lovely.  
  
Tugged by the hair back upright, bright sudden pain making him gasp- _lovely, so lovely, so good-_ Nesta rearranged them face to face. Kissed the tears from his cheeks- which did nothing so much as make him cry harder- and stole once more, every bit of air he could have inhaled.  
  
He didn’t have the presence of mind when she let go not to collapse forward. To bury his face in her neck, seek every bit of skin contact he could reach.  
  
Nesta held tight. Asked after a long, long moment, his heart only hammering instead of crescendo, “Cassian?”  
  
“ _Good_ ,” Cassian sighed, “Good, so good.”  
  
She exhaled, happy, as Cassian kissed her neck, rubbed his cheek against her skin. “You look incredible like that,” Nesta said quietly, “Beautiful. You’d move however I wanted.”  
  
He could only nod. That was- _exactly,_ what Cassian wanted. To give.  
  
The hand in his hair returned, gentle. Cassian wondered if he could think of a way to ask her to braid it, if Nesta understood that simple touch was perhaps the best he’d ever felt. Absolutely tender, mindful enough of the curl to smooth and feel their spring without pulling strands apart.  
  
“I would,” Nesta replied to his thought, “If you braid mine too.”  
  
Cassian hadn’t braided another persons hair in five centuries, since Azriel.  
 _  
Of course he would_ \- he’d beg for it, if she asked, to weave the patterns that meant _devotion_ , that Nesta was loved by an Illyrian, in that long, beautiful hair.  
  
The breath of her laugh, Nesta shifted closer, pleased by the image. The motion dropped her back on Cassian’s lap, made apparent the aching hardness that had been easy to ignore until that moment.  
  
Impossible to ignore- as Nesta made a pleased little noise, and ground against him.  
  
Cassian groaned.  
 _  
“Please,_ Nes”-  
  
“Please?”  
  
She was absolutely fucking perfect. “Let me touch you,” Cassian murmured, _“Please, can I touch you?”  
_  
She stopped moving, froze for a second that scared the absolute shit out of Cassian until he realized she’d stilled to untie the strappy configuration of ribbon that held tight her chemise. Nesta pulled the flimy silk over her head in one smooth motion and fell back into his arms- bare, beautiful, her skin glowing faintly with magic.  
  
Cassian had been able to breath easier with Nesta’s hand around his throat.  
  
With shaking hands, Cassian deposited her back onto the blankets. Watched, the one actually frozen, as Nesta comfortably sprawled. Shameless, happy, watching him with intrigued, narrow eyes.  
  
One more nod of permission, his hand hovering over one ankle, Cassian took a deep breath and went slow.  
 _  
He wanted_ \- he wanted to memorize this moment with his mouth, to touch every part of her until whatever remained of their separate scents muddled into something new.  
  
Not a single scar, so strange that it was dissonance in his head. Sixteen freckles, mortal youth immortalized on her shoulders and arms, the rise and fall of Nesta’s slender ribs, a flush that went all the way to her navel. _  
_  
Cassian kissed everything he could reach, entranced by every beautiful inch of her.  
  
He could have spent an entire night on this and only this- to know all at once and forever the fluttering pulse on her wrist, the shape of her knees, the curve of her spine. To live in the sighed exhale as Cassian touched her in a way Nesta _enjoyed to be touched-  
_  
Cassian wouldn’t spend a whole night on this, because he could taste from her skin, her scent, the sound of her heart- how much Nesta _wanted_.  
  
Like a dream- his dreams, more than could be counted, over and over and nothing as good as _this_ \- Cassian moved from the bed, and dropped to his knees.  
  
Nesta opened her eyes.  
  
Said- _because she was perfect, because she knew his heart and thoughts_ \- with a sly little smile, “You’re going to stay. You’re going to make me come and hold me while I sleep and be here when I wake up.”  
  
He was going to die, “Yes.”  
  
Nesta slid to the edge of the bed, lovely legs moving into his sight. She stroked his cheek, tilted back Cassian’s head until he met her gaze. Said, with that ruthless smiling mouth, brows high, “Yes?”  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” It was a moan, “Yes, _please,_ Nesta.”  
  
A real smile, eyes blue, blue, blue, Nesta bent to press a kiss to his mouth. Murmured soft, to Cassian lips. “I know you’ll be good.” The nip of sharp teeth, one more shuddering gasp wrung from him before she moved back, “You’re beautiful on your knees, Cassian.” _  
_  
Grip gentle, Cassian lifted her foot to prop it atop his shoulder.  
  
Spread Nesta wide and _learned.  
_  
The shape of her beneath his tongue. Where Nesta gasped, thigh muscles jumping beneath his cheek. Wet and responsive- Cassian licked at Nesta’s heat soft and slow, wondering, distantly, if he could do this _always._  
  
Wake Nesta in the dawn with open mouthed kisses on her gleaming thighs. Make her coffee and sprawl at her feet, until pleasure bloomed with the golden sun on her face. Distract her from work- maybe she’d punish him. Maybe it would be a reward- to be ignored, to have no responsibility but _this_ -  
  
Learned that Nesta’s patience with his gentle pace could break and _did_ , a handful of his hair caught tight as Cassians tongue dipped inside her alongside two fingers.  
  
Learned that Nesta chased pleasure without an ounce of shame, grinding against his hand, voice a fractured breathy thing full of filthy words and benediction, praise that made Cassian feel like he was the one falling apart.  
  
Did fall apart.  
  
He didn’t have the voice, the words to say in the moment: _Nesta, use me. Nesta, Nesta, Nesta.  
_  
There was only euphoria, lapping at Nesta through her orgasm. Surprise, that pleasure roared down the bond and dragged him along too, untouched. Burying his face against her soft stomach and trying to breathe, Nesta so happy she laughed, curling over top of him.   
  
His mate.  
  
His mate, his Nesta.  


_***_

_  
  
_Death was neither restful or insensate, in either of their memories.  
  
The moments fourfold- Nesta drowning with agony in the Cauldron, every second a millennia, her lungs full of something so much worse than blood or water, remaking with _breaking_ her bones. Cassian, unconscious with pain but nonetheless dragged present and fighting by the sound of her heart when it stopped. 

Cassian’s death by slow cascade, implosion that stole his thoughts but not the anguish as Rhys destroyed him from the inside out. Nesta, who’d dropped into her power like rain over an ocean, pulled him back with the tide and her screaming soul.  
  
True memory, the dream- Cassian didn’t know from which of them the nightmare came from until Nesta shuddered awake.  
  
Rolled upright, to the edge of the bed, face to her upraised knees, as her whole body shook.  
  
He knew better than to touch her. Power was everywhere, present, choking in the air. What the Cauldron gave her, what Nesta stole and what had remade her- magic that could tear asunder the world, shred reality and reforge it.  
  
Instead, Cassian followed at safe distance, the curve of his body as he sat up behind her. _“Nesta?”_  
  
She shook her head. The most desperate part of him latched onto her clenched hands, arms locked around her legs with bonebreaking force. It took precious, stupid seconds to understand what he was seeing.  
  
Despite the humid night, despite the fact that seconds before she’d been asleep, fully stretched out on top of his body like Cassian himself was her bed- Nesta was _cold.  
_  
Most of the downy blankets had ended up on the floor, but it was easy to find the softest of them, to wrap it around her hunched shoulders.  
  
Nesta buried her face in the plush fabric and sighed.  
  
The brief gladness that he’d been able to help her was nothing in the river of Cassian’s thoughts. _Cold_ \- the Cauldron had been like ice, liquid cool but burning. Winter, when she’d nearly starved mortal. That same snowy hell when her sister was stolen, when only Nesta could remember, understand why a fortune was coming but not fast enough to save them from frigid night in a house torn apart by faery hands.  
  
Cold, when the High Lord and Lady of Night had banished her to frozen Illyria.  
  
Cassian, hands shaking, slipped around her to kneel on the floor and wrap a second blanket around Nesta’s legs.  
  
Blindly, Nesta caught his hand. Breathed a little deeper. “Come back.”  
  
Heart in his throat, Cassian rearranged himself behind her, still, still, _still,_ as Nesta slowly leaned back. Pillowed her head on his shoulder, relaxed by slow degrees as Cassian wrapped himself around her, dipped his face until they were cheek to cheek.  
  
He would have been absolutely happy to stay that way until the sun rose.  
  
But eventually, one hand fought free of the blanket tangle to hold onto his arms around her waist, Nesta sighed. Said, forcefully light, “It’s not cold anymore. _Death_ \- now that it’s mine.”  
  
He squeezed, for just a second, wordless in affection. Said aloud, voice still rough with sleep. “I remember.”  
  
Safe in the fire, cocooned in flame, as the world changed.  
  
The same fire of that scythe, against whom no life could resist ignition.  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” Nesta breathed, the echo of a laugh in the word. She went on, snuggling closer in the dark, “I did not walk the battlefield, but I was always there beside you.”  
  
For a heartbeat, Cassian’s thoughts were paralyzed by the _what-if._ Nesta, beside him, an unstoppable force. Nesta, with him as she was always, in his heart, a whole eternity.  
  
For so long he’d been alright with the knowledge someday in battle, he’d fall. An immortal life, gone- for Nesta, at first, that Cassian had wanted to live at all.  
  
Because of Nesta, that he’d gotten to live and have this.  
  
She shook her head, sharp cheekbones sliding against Cassian’s jaw. “If you hadn’t- if I couldn’t- _Cassian_ , I would have unraveled the world. I would have obliterated Rhysand and an entire Court. Nothing, _no one_ , could have stopped me.”  
  
The thought true, as it lived in the silence between them- _Cassian wouldn’t have wanted her stopped.  
_  
“I didn’t want him dead for Illyria,” Cassian whispered, “For myself, for Az. But every time I think of how he made you feel- how he _looked_ at you. Nesta, _I want rip out his fucking heart and give it to you.”  
  
“_The crown and more than half his country was enough,” Nesta murmured, “For now.”  
  
But she was thinking about power. About the fact that she _could._ That Nesta would chose to never walk again into war because there’d be no wars after, only an ocean of blood.  
  
Helpless in the face of his feelings, love and awe, Cassian breathed into her hair, “You’re incredible.”  
  
“Says the man who led a _revolution_.”  
  
He grinned despite himself, “I had very good inspiration.” She was smiling back, but the darkness lingered, like the gleam of power still caught in her glowing eyes. “Nesta.”  
  
Cassian waited as she turned, twisting in his embrace to meet his gaze. He knew his own eyes flipped back light in the dark, for no reason of magic, only that Cassian was something _else._ “I’ve never been human,” Cassian began, brushing his knuckles down her cheek at the automatic look of her face, reply that was about to come, “ _No,_ sweetheart. I’m not afraid of you. I can’t love you like a human would- _I want it_ in blood and forever. Every part of you.”  
  
The amused twist of her mouth softened. Like his heart wasn’t in her hands, Nesta said _savagely,_ “I was _never_ afraid of you.”  
  
Fear he hadn’t known still lived, deep in the back of his mind.  
  
“I’d kill for you,” She said, leaning into his touch. _I love you.  
_  
The words didn’t make it to his voice, but Cassian replied. _You. Forever, always, in any shape. Nowhere I wouldn’t go, nothing I wouldn’t battle.  
_  
She was kissing him before Cassian realized she’d moved, greedy hands grasping skin. No room for thought, he seized her by the hips and dragged Nesta close.  
 _  
Close, close, close_ \- her skin an inferno beneath those blankets, every bare inch divine, beloved.  
  
There was fire and then there was _this_ \- her teeth on his neck, her hands in his hair, her soft skin beneath his mouth, the heat between her thighs.  
  
Nothing slow and no discussion, a meeting in the middle of a desire vast enough to last until time ended. The bruising shift of her grip, Nesta’s her voice aloud or in his mind he could longer tell- saying, _Cassian, yes.  
_  
 _Cassian._  
  
The heat of her around him, the heat of Nesta’s gasp, fanned across Cassian’s face as she cried out- the heat that was going to burn Cassian out of his skin, swallow him whole, and Cassian was going to take her with him-  
  
They broke apart together, the bond singing.  
  
Loud in the predawn quiet, they breathed. She’d slumped, fully, warm weight limp but for the hand petting at Cassian’s stomach, it’s shaky rise and fall.  
  
He waited until she stirred, smug smile nearly wide as his, pressed against Cassian’s skin. It was only then- her hand slowing, tracing with intent each ridge of muscle- that Cassian flung Nesta back into the pillows.  
  
Her laugh rang out- abbreviated as Cassian followed to bury his face between Nesta’s legs.  
  
There was fire, there was heat, and there was this: an entire burning ocean, in which Cassian wished to drown.  


***  


In the dark, in the overwhelming reality of Nesta’s attention, Cassian had failed to really notice the skylight.  
  
One long curving panel of glass, enforced with magic. Fabricated not to crown the tower in a glass dome, but just for this- to pour morning light from the second the sun was high enough onto Nesta’s bed.  
  
Glow with the dawn, but what woke Cassian the first time from where he’d eventually fallen asleep, curled in the curve of Nesta’s body, his head pillowed on her thigh, was Nesta herself. Pulling him back up to her with a sleepy grumble, rolling on top of him to tuck her head his chin where he lay.  
  
The second time, it was to sunlight, faint and magic.  
  
Nesta, only half asleep, pressing her cheek harder against his chest.  
  
Cassian, for a long moment, did nothing but breathe.  
  
He wasn’t really thinking. Too happy, a breath held until lungs were screaming, a joy so big it hurt. Complete and utter trust, the body of the woman he loved- _loved, loved, loved_ \- spread out on top of him like Cassian was all the warmth and safe harbor she could want.  
  
There were a hundred things he’d spent his life unlearning. A brutal thousand, but some Illyrian values- _occupied Illyria, captive and twisted_ \- held true. He wanted and _had,_ to give the whole gift of himself, whatever it was worth.  
  
Glory was the defense of what was loved, to the bitter, bloody end- but loved had to come first. Love had to be given.  
  
“Isn’t that a prayer?” Nesta asked, raising her face.  
  
Reply to his thought- reply to the giddy happiness, the mess of her hair falling over his shoulder. Cassian stroked the sharp line of her hip, bare skin silken. Grinned. Recited. “May this body be an altar, for honor is my heart and its gift is glory.”  
  
Pink and red, soft blued gold light on her sleep-pale face. Nesta tucked an arm under her chin, propped up on his chest. 

_“Glory,”_ She repeated, fond. Illyrian words were a twist of mountain wind from her bitten mouth, syllables spoken effortlessly. “Sky-loved, blood-earned devotion. Do you believe?”  
  
“Yes.” Cassian thought of the black diamond ring she wore so often, ripped and reforged from the war crown of a kingdom that had thrown them both away. He believed in the cost of blood, the sacrosanct power of protecting what his heart chose until his very last breath.  
  
He believed in the gods of the mountains, and he believed in her.  
  
“I met them,” Cassian whispered, with a smile that was just as much a secret, shared between to the two of them.  
  
The sun rose, and Cassian told Nesta about the mountains beneath the sky, the sky beneath the mountains. Of walking into the horizon and being _known.  
_  
Chosen.  
  
He had given all there was to give- but he had kept his heart. For her.  
  
“Did it feel…like breathing?”  
  
She was smiling again, that wicked grin, and Cassian thought he’d never tire of seeing it. He’d never seen her smile so much, so easily.  
  
“I felt it,” Nesta whispered, and if she realized she’d slipped between one word and next from common to Illyrian, effortless, so very properly spoken Cassian struggled to keep up, it didn’t show. “In the Hewn City, when I went to return what had been taken. All mountains remember each other.”  
  
There was mountains, and then there was _mountains: stone-holy-motherland._  
  
Nesta said the latter.  
  
Cassian’s breathe rattled, if only a bit. Enough that her face was a silent question he had to answer, laughing a little at the smugness, the visible note of his attention noted and appreciated.  
“You speak… _beautifully._ You’ve never told me how you learned.” Her gaze blazed soft, made the rest of the admission easy. “You’re more fluent than I am.”  
  
“I didn’t learn,” Nesta said, and rolled, graceful, off his body and to her feet. She was dressed by the time she hit the ground. Propped up on one elbow Cassian watched as she proceeded to braid her hair, speaking around the pins that had likewise appeared between her teeth. 

“It’s the Cauldron. The universality of meaning. Elain and I both- we can speak and understand any language we encounter. Sign. Brail. Read anything.” She shoved one last pin in her hastily twisted back hair, and planted her feet. “I have something to show you.”

She led him into high summer.  
  
Cassian immediately gave up pulling on the shirt he was holding in his hand, having stumbled into the bare minimum of dress before Nesta pulled him through a silvered door.

The tower was where she lay her head, but Cassians knew without asking, despite the thousands of options _this_ is where Nesta worked. Before a solid wall of glass blasted in daylight, strange lush plants a respite not at all for the treacherous heat sinking into his bones.  
  
Paper absolutely everywhere. More glass oddities he had no desire to touch bubbling away. One towering wall spared of bookshelves for chalkboard, filled with the writing of two hands, one Nesta’s linking scrawl. 

Both messier and more alive than anything Cassian had imagined, so hot he was already a little light-headed.  
  
Trailing to her right, Cassian didn’t need the hand Nesta held out to follow, but he took it. Squeezed in helpless affection at the look Nesta cast over her shoulder, sidestepping between towering tropical plants thriving under skylights and piles of books that seemed to erupt, natural landmarks, mountainous straight from the floor.  
  
She led him to stand before the writing on the wall.  
  
The words at immediate eye-level were incomprehensible, Dawn-script rendered loving, characters smeared every so slightly where chalk refused to flourish as ink. But the rest of the words were Nesta’s, woven through.  
  
Two languages- his, hers, terms that didn’t exist in both, what failed in translation.  
  
Forbidden by the Night Court for more than a millennia; to write the words of the wind. To _speak_ them. To build in stone, to weave knot work into cloth, to hold and record anything but the smallest pieces of what had come before.  
  
They had stories, but no books.  
  
The promises every adult Illyrian tattooed into their resilient skin, but not a single remembrance of where those whirling marks came from. Their gods, surely, but to what names did those gods answer?  
  
Once, they had filled the sky, the thousand colors of earth beneath the rising sun. Once, as many as drops in the storm, clan upon clan upon clan, a mighty kingdom.

Once, the gift of the wind had been allowed to inspire more than violence, paid for without blood.  
  
They had lived, triumphed, but so very much more than Cassian could save had been _erased._  
  
“Nesta.” _My dawn, a sword against the dark, Nes, sweetheart, what-  
_  
She squeezed his hand, hard. “I was waiting to finish, but,” She met his gaze, and there was what his heart was straining for- _joy,_ untempered by righteous fury. “It’s going to take time.”  
 _  
Time._ Cassian almost laughed. No time at all ago he’d been prepared to die. Ready, to fall and take the whole damned Night Court with him if even a score of Illyrians survived.  
  
No amount of years waiting could be worth more than this.  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
She tried to slip from his grasp. Grinned as instead Cassian made himself be pulled along, as Nesta slipped to stand closer to the chalkboard, in the epicenter of piled paper and tomes.  
  
“I’ve been working with your priestesses,” He inclined his head- he’d known, of course he’d known, but Cassian hadn’t _imagined_ , “You’ve got about a dozen fully fluent native speakers, and maybe twice that in acolytes who can string together a sentence, but not comfortably.”  
  
She gestured to the piles of books. “Illyria was part of the Library. Unfortunately what I’ve been able to find was old by the conquest. _Ancient_. Anything that’s in the correct dialect was housed through a door, in the mountains.”  
  
“And everything in the mountains was burned.”  
  
She nodded. Sharp, quick. “The issue is _compiling._ Everything anyone remembers into one source, and then turning that source into something that can be used to teach.”  
  
Eighty-nine children lived in Cassian’s kingdom. He knew every face, had learned every name. The future of Illyria was three-quarter’s female, nearly all under the age of ten. No one said _bastard,_ but Cassian knew that too: forty-six. More than half, lives that would have been discarded just a generation ago.  
  
No camp lord still lived, and not a single one of those children would grow up the way Cassian had. As Azriel had. As Cassian’s mother and grandmother had.  
  
Eighteen of the children were orphans, with no family or adult who felt after the wars that they could raise a child, so Cassian had taken them in as royal wards. 

No heir, nothing political, just this: a light that Cassian would slaughter the night itself to allow to thrive.  
 _  
“The kids,_ ” Cassian said, and found he couldn’t go on.  
  
A knife to the heart, her smile. “The kids,” Nesta repeated, “Who I would in fact like to meet. Had to find out from _Lucien._ If we can get through this fast enough, then they can learn when it’s still easy. Grow up with the language. The forest fae and the borderlands will be speaking it in a hundred years.”  
  
Grow up with the language.  
  
Cassian spun her into his arms and collapsed. Buried his face in her hair, wrapped both arms around her in crushing affection. “You want to meet them?”  
  
“Was I not,” Nesta drawled, like she wasn’t also busy snuggling her face into the bare skin of Cassian’s neck, “Supposed to take interest in you adopting _eighteen children?”  
  
His heart was going to burst.  
_  
“They’re not…you know, really mine.”  
  
She bit him. Didn’t wait for Cassian to live through the shudder of _pain pleasure wonder_ , before she said, scathing. _“Cassian.”  
_  
“I’m not going to make them heirs, or anything.” _I just want it to be clear any child who needs it has a home. Illyrian or otherwise. “_ It’s an old custom, from”-  
  
“From when kings would stock their sons royal guard with companions, orphans from the clans who would be loyal above all else to their brother.” Someday, Cassian would get over the burning, insane desire to fight with her just to hear that tone of voice. Someday. “Before the Night Court, by all accounts, Illyria valued its children above all else. Cassian. Pretending you’re not going to love them will just make it harder.”  
  
“You don’t mind?”  
  
She huffed. “That you’re an excellent king?”  
 _  
No child should grow up as either of us grew up. They’ll be safe_ , she said, in the beloved silence, _and they’ll speak the wind.  
_  
Not letting go, not even a for a second, Cassian gave into the urge to move just enough to see her face. His whole fucking heart, blue eyes blazing, who’d work herself to the bone for a people who weren’t even hers. Librarian for less than a decade, reviving a nearly-extinct language. 

She was a miracle, and he told her so.  
  
“Tell me that when its done,” Nesta purred, before turning all the way around in his arms, to lean, like it was the most natural thing in the world, against him as she spoke.  
  
Cassian propped his chin on top of her head, following the gesture of one hand to the translations.

“There’s at least three major dialect shifts. The problem is that Elain and I both revert to whatever is being presently spoken to us. I _can’t_ translate between ancient and modern- Erebus can speak just the one. We’re calling it High Illyrian- but he either never learned to write it or has forgotten how by now, and”-  
  
Cassian caught up to what she was saying. “Erebus…your brother? Speaks ancient Illyrian?”  
  
“And writes in a Dawn dialect that Thesan himself has confirmed _is probably_ historic poetic verse, but even he can’t parse it very well.” She breathed out a sigh. “It’s just going to take time. And”-  
  
“You adopted him from Dawn?”  
  
She let go of his arms, stepped away, turned. Said in an abruptly dead tone that sent Cassian’s heart hammering, “I thought Azriel told you.”  
  
“Elain told me something about mountains and circles and vengeance, finished off with informing me that her brother thought Azriel was very beautiful, which might have been a problem had he been ‘of an age for dalliance.’”  
  
Nesta swore, the last word sounding very much like _traitor.  
_  
“You thought he was a child.” Nesta sighed. “She saw this moment. She’s probably laughing _right now-_ we didn’t adopt him.” She delicately pressed a hand to her brow. Just an instant, but when that tell of stress was gone so too was any openness. Stone carved pride faced Cassian. 

“He…adopted us. Not a brother in blood, or legality, but in power. We are…more like him than we are Feyre, or any fae that walk the world.”  
  
The words had a cost, old fear that stiffened her spine, darkened her eyes.  
  
“He was born one thing and became another.” Cassian said, quietly.  
  
“Something…like me.” She raised her chin even higher. “He’s been a monster longer than he was allowed to be a person. But he’s _learning_ and we’re”-  
  
“You’re like him,” Cassian interrupted, and closed the gap between them. “Nes, you don’t have to- I don’t care. I’m never going to- to, I trust you.”  
  
She leaned into the touch, leaned with her whole body into his for a heartbeat before she spoke. “Erebus is his real name. But the Night Court called him something else.”  
  
Cassian had several thoughts at once- that frankly, they could all hate the High House of Night together- of course, like Nesta herself, those she’d gathered around her in love were fearsome and rarified.

And the Night Court, the Night Court, what ancient thing did they hate, nameless and like nothing else?  
  
Nesta saw it on his face.  
  
“He’s _alive?_ ”  
  
She inclined her head. “We cannot die, unless we truly wish to. All living things want to survive. He was a wisp of himself, and then"-  
  
“And then a civil war happened, _and the entire nobility?”_ Cassian’s laugh was a crackle, rattling in his lungs. “Rhys _fed_ him. Freed him and made him powerful again. The oldest enemy his crown carries.”  
  
Brittle tension in her entire being seemed to melt, just a little, enough for a particularly mean smile. “Rhysand is an idiot.”  
  
And then, quieter, “Does it bother you?”  
  
She wasn’t asking if Cassian cared that she hated the man who’d once been his leigelord and brother.  
  
The answer was easy.  
  
“No,” He stroked her rigid spine, tried to find words to encompass it all: he loved her, and that love meant not just devotion, but trust. He trusted Nesta, and Cassian always had. 

If he couldn’t lead his armies- if the world were Cassian’s to bend and Nesta truly had no desire for the mountain throne he longed to share- there was no other person he’d look to first to be his general. _  
_  
His queen to whom Cassian would never need give a country.

Nesta had created her own, and it was beautiful. A land limited only by the impossible scope of her hungry mind, knowledge of ancients who adored her nearly so much as he did.   
  
There was nothing to fear.  
  
And fear was not the first thing Cassian felt, as shadow very suddenly coalesced.  
  
Fell from the ceiling to hit the floor and books like it possessed physical weight, shifting in place to resolve into the lazily sprawled body of a High Fae man.  
  
Unarmed. Lanky strength from calloused elegant hands to shoulders barely contained in rumpled grey silk, fucked-up beyond comparison soul-searing black eyes set in a face just familiar enough to the one that Cassian would know insensate.  
  
Cassian looked at Nesta. Nesta, unhelpfully, was busy kicking at the legs of the man on her floor.  
  
“You said,” She hissed, “That you’d stop landing on the books.”  
  
He shrugged graceful, sprang lightening swift to his feet, and _kissed her on the forehead._ “Elain said you needed me. And quite frankly, dearheart,”-  
  
“Lucien was the one cooking, so you melted into the nearest shadow without a backwards glance?”  
  
He hummed in agreement, and turned to face Cassian.  
  
Difficult to swallow down, the instinct to attack. Cassian only rocked forward- fought against the automatic reaction to him touching Nesta. The twitch of his hands had been visible, Cassian knew.  
  
But it could not be clearer this man was family. Was one of the just handful of people that Nesta was comfortable allowing to reach.  
  
No stranger got anywhere near that close- no threat could have even appeared here.  
  
But there was nothing human, nothing fae, nothing _alive,_ in those eyes.  
  
Cassian swallowed. Managed, with almost a smile, to say, “Did you change your face to look like them?”  
  
The God of Truth, the Bone Carver, the death god that does not lie, laughed warmly.  
  
“On the contrary, I’m told all time is a circle of an ocean, and it makes perfect sense we were all born like this.” His gaze flicked to Nesta, before he said, “I was very glad to wake, and find family.”  
  
Amren had survived the Prison with transformation, yielded something beyond comprehension to escape. The Bone Carver had not escaped- had not even been able to, for he had been, by all understanding, the first prisoner, the prison’s beating heart.  
  
Since time immemorial.  
  
Without air, without sky, without _life.  
_  
Until Rhysand gave him the choice between endless nothingness and unspeakable violence. Cassian too, would have faced the whole horde of Hybern without even a weapon but for what he was, rather than go back.  
  
The ancient being before them watched Cassian’s face for a careful moment, before inclining his head. Erebus bowed, hands to his heart, head low, dark curls flipping back a rainbow of light Cassian briefly wondered if he were hallucinating.  
  
“Hail King of Illyria. May the setting sun burn with the enemies of the clan of Flame, may your wings reach sky to sky. Ch’rii.”  
  
Slowly, wishing Nesta was still holding onto him, Cassian said, “Clan of _Flame?”  
_  
The Carver tipped back upright, tilted his head at an angle that implied strongly the vertebrate of his neck might not exist. “Not mountain? No. Not Obsidian, Sky-glow, Windsong. No, you were born to wear vermillion, were you not?”  
  
The words came from behind his teeth. “I don’t know.”  
  
Formality, modicum that is had been, melted away. Broad shoulder’s slumped, Erebus shoved back up his slipping rolled sleeves, and looked to Nesta.  
 _  
Spidersilk_ , stained with ink. Little winking diamond buttons, carved like flowers. Coal hair falling into his collar a mess, and definitely, as Cassian blinked, reflecting light that wasn’t _there.  
_  
“Still a no? He can be alive for littlest Archeron but be..impotent for eternity? I could rip out his tongue? Make him pay for every name lost, every word unfound, every clan who will never sing  
the sky?”  
  
He turned back to Cassian, something distinctly fond in those black on black eyes, stranger depth than Azriel’s infinitely dark northern gaze had ever possessed. “We vote, you see, as a family. Elain makes final call.”  
  
“Azriel,” Nesta said, “Came up with the rules.”  
 _  
He let Azriel read him, everything.  
_  
“But I also have my own,” Erebus continued, “And I owe a great debt by rules of both my being and the world I was born in, to you. To your people.”  
  
“Killing the High Houses was not just me. We did it to survive.”  
  
The strange, happy monster with Nesta’s cheekbones laughed again. “No, but I salute you for the clearing of my city. The debt between us is old as the conquest, and I would ask that you hear it. Dawn has paid, but so too, I must. I…wish to.”  
  
Eyes on Cassian, their weight like a kiss, Nesta said, “Erebus. Come to the tower in twenty minutes.”  
  
With a flourished salute Cassian couldn’t parse the origin of- much less, how it had _happened,_ a bend that should have broken- the Bone Carver allowed himself to be ordered.  
  
Vanished.  
  
And Cassian finally managed an uninterrupted breath.  
  
Ran a hand through his hair and pulled for a second, like the sting would bring him back to reality. Nesta was watching him, still and quiet, made steady only by sheer will.  
 _  
Fear_ \- and that he could actually do something about.  
  
Slow, slow, as Nesta watched him move, Cassian sidled close again. Waited until she reached to carefully wrap her hand in both of his. Thumb stroked over the knuckles where two of her exactly sixteen freckles lived, a trace of mortality the color of summer honey counted softly.  
  
“I went to see him.”  
  
She was frozen, marble, but Cassian went on, “Before the war, after Hybern. And the face he wore was _you-_ but you like him. Wreathed in gold light, covered in blood, eyes like a sky without stars. I thought it was a lie- _I thought_ \- I thought he was taunting me. You, everything good in the world, overlaid with how I’d pictured Lady Death my entire life.”  
  
He shook his head. “It wasn’t a lie. _He doesn’t lie._ ”  
  
What they’d always been warned: the Bone Carver could not be trusted, but the Bone Carver always told the truth.  
  
Nesta breathed.  
  
Nesta squeezed his hand and said in that perfect, cutting voice that almost hid relief. “Not everything good in the world.”  
  
“Everything good I want.”  
  
She laughed. Tilted back her head to meet his gaze. “Why did you go?”  
  
Once, twice, thrice, Cassian squeezed her hand back- three words. “Formally? To protect Feyre. Stop her from making a deal we couldn’t pay. Really, for you.”  
  
Nesta as power had rendered her in the Bone Carver’s visage: a dream, a nightmare, what had haunted and loved Cassian his whole life. He’d always walked beside death.  
  
He’d always been waiting for her.  
  
“Did Azriel really see everything?”  
  
She nodded, sharp. “ _Everything_. And you’re right, he tells the truth, because Erebus sees no point in lying. He was made a monster, became a monster, but he’s trying to remember what it was to be a person.”  
  
In the dark of night, Nesta: _I would have done it. I could have. Nothing could have stopped me.  
_  
Not a monster to Cassian, not ever.  
  
Captured hand raised, Cassian pressed her palm to his chest. Nesta’s fingertips moved to align along twists of promise like the ink made physical demarcation, found the shape of the tattoos he’d earned without looking. Honor. Glory and love and fealty that as an Illyrian, was proved in blood.  
  
“Tell me the story, Librarian of the Ten Thousand?”  
  
Her lips twitched. “Tell me, oh King, what knowledge does Illyria seek?”  
  
“The story of a god,” Cassian breathed. Her hand retracted, nails dragging against his skin. “The story of debt.” He rocked closer, helpless, “The story of making.”  
  
Her smile, when it bloomed, was the gleaming edge of a blade. To his ducked face, body folding in toward that single point of contact, Nesta purred, “It’s a love story.”  
  
And so Cassian learned what bloody thing made true eternity, learned the heart of the shadow that would walk behind Nesta into death itself.  


***

The purple flowers were monkshood.  
  
Wolfsbane. Aconite. Pure, beautiful poison mixed in tea that Erebus was drinking, utterly relaxed, when Nesta pulled Cassian back into the tower.  
  
Cassian understood why Nesta had snatched away the canister.  
  
Erebus, legs folded together sitting on top of the counter, evidently did not, grinning and holding out a cup already poured in Cassian’s direction, the steam alone making his lips numb.  
  
Nesta, very smoothly, dropped Cassian’s hand with a fond caress to slide forward and intercept the cup. She hummed appreciation to the god whose smile, very suddenly, seemed painfully young, “Did you add lemon?”  
  
Erebus made a face Cassian was more familiar with on Nesta’s person, a little eyebrow motion that said, _who do you think I am,_ before merrily plopping a sugar cube into her cup.  
  
Cassian absolutely did not flinch at enough poison to drop a faery grown splashing her mouth.  
  
He did flinch when the Library or Nesta- _or Erebus_ \- magicked a cup of Illyrian tea straight into his hand, mixed as the priestesses made it, warm spice in the dark liquid, just barely cut with cream.  
  
Erebus- who said in a wry, terrible tone, “That’s how it tasted when I was young. Nesta tells me cinnamon no longer grows in the lowlands?”  
  
Cassian blinked.  
  
Looked at Nesta, who was making a similarly controlled, _furious_ expression. The lowlands had… _nothing._ Dangerous forests with wild fae the Night Court ignored and Cassian brought to council, interspersed with cleared farmland. “Not in living memory. But I’ve never met a mountain priestess who didn’t make it like this.”  
  
Pink shining in black curls, a sunrise that absolutely was not there, Erebus inclined his head.  
  
“We’re about to begin exporting tea again,” Cassian said, sliding into kingship like a well-worn cloak. “It’s been a very long time since the crop was actually handled at capacity. If you remember other things, it would very valuable to me and council to hear it. Agriculture is not…our speciality.”  
  
Erebus made another birdlike gesture that should have torn muscle, quick and sharp. “I can do that. I can…”  
  
Nesta, just as inhumanly fast, a graceful little whirl, stretched to sit on the counter herself. Shoulder to shoulder with the Bone Carver, her knee touching Cassian’s hip.  
  
He didn’t acknowledge it, head angled quizzical to the ceiling, to the pomegranate tree stretched larger than any such thing was meant to exist, but Cassian would bet that shoulder was leaning harder all the same.  
  
“My people,” Erebus began, voice old as the sea, tired as the ceaseless tide, “Had a future because of yours. I would give you bone and flesh and vengeance, but I know that has been accounted for. I would offer instead what was given: to safeguard the future of what is yours, so long as I walk the world.”  
  
Cassian sipped the tea, looking at the absolutely false repose, tasting the air the smelled of nothing so much so much as a blazing, burning, pyre.  
  
Asked, not unkindly, “What is mine?”  
  
Light that _was_ there, sunlight glinting off the milky surface of jade, spinning in Erebus’s hand. “Illyria’s. I lived for a vow once and I would like to make another. To each and every child mountain born."  
  
He looked up- he looked at Cassian with those eyes like death, the very stars burnt out, and said, “There is nowhere in the world I will not hear them. Darkness is everywhere, and so am I. No matter how long they live. If they call, I will come, and in death I will safeguard their bones.”  
  
Eighty-nine. Just eight-nine. Less than a Legion, than a phalanx, than the occupants of a single Velaris neighborhood- the whole entire hope Cassian had broken his world for.  
  
“You want to keep them safe?”  
  
It wasn’t a real question, and Nesta’s brother knew it. Smiled, twisted languorous to prop up one knee, rest his sharp chin on it. “Perhaps I could be a god father. Bone Carver is, after all, terribly obvious. _I_ didn’t come up with it.”  
  
He couldn’t say no. He didn’t really want to, even if it was insane. An indestructible god who wanted to keep his people’s children safe. Cassian had made worse deals for safety- had lived one out, most of his life.  
  
“Will they need to be marked?”  
  
Erebus shook his head. “It is my promise. It will live in their blood, but they pay no cost.”  
  
Cassian held out his hand. To Nesta, who opened his palm in a flash of steel, a precise whorl sliced, before blood rose to make a bargain. The mark was matched by Erebus without intervention, skin rended with what seemed like a thought.  
  
Blood to blood, promise bound.  
  
Sunlight homely, Erebus laughed.  
  
Cassian was struck by how much the sound echoed Elain. Lovely but wild, just a little too unmoored to ever be human. He believed in fate- nothing else could explain _Nesta Archeron_ \- but Cassian also believed in destiny made.  
  
Loss borne and magic stolen to become something more. Erebus, who wasn’t quite meant to exist- Erebus, who’d been born in time immemorial, with cutting Archeron cheeks and wavy curls. Who’d left a forgotten homeland to make his life in the same utterly magical place that would give his eventual sisters eternity.  
  
“Every generation, King of Illyria. Every single one.”  
  
Cassian inclined his head.  
  
But not for long enough to miss Erebus’s grin, nightmare gaze on Nesta’s knee where it grazed Cassian’s side, distance unbearable. “And welcome to the family, brother.”

***

He stayed three days, with the tacit knowledge that any separation would be temporary. Would to both of them be no real separation at all- their different distinctive roles a pride, nothing to try to force together.  
  
She lived in his soul- Cassian couldn’t lose Nesta to _distance.  
_  
Which was how he found himself pulled into a temple to the wind beneath the ground, a Library haven of blue under gold, a goddess whose name was lost. Nesta’s voice a purr, telling stories- history, _possibility_ , could Cassian feel the magic of this place that remembered still the open sky?  
  
Cassian could.  
  
Cassian had sucked her fingers into his mouth, a silent prayer to the holy being that Nesta was.  
  
Exactly how Cassian ended up catching his breath, naked in a sacred fountain, body limp in the aftermath of pleasured pain. Drifting, like the phantom sound of ancient wind in these gilded walls, eyes half shut as he listened to Nesta speak.  
  
“You _what_?” The words were slow, sleep-laden soft with joy, but Cassian’s heart was firing a rhythm that _insisted_ he’d heard Nesta wrong.  
  
“I think we should spar,” Nesta repeated, twisting her head until the long wet rope of her hair wrapped around his wrist slithered, caress ghostly over his tattooed pulse. “I want you to fight me.”  
  
Nerves, wonder, a burned flutter beneath his ribs- Cassian contained himself enough to say, smiling, _wanting whatever she wanted but wanting,_ “Like?”  
  
The gesture of his hand through the fountains clear water made her laugh, droplets rolling down her chest. Cassian wanted to catch them-Cassian did, blunt teeth dragged soft on Nesta’s waist, just barely reachable where she floated on her back.  
  
To his credit- _to the part of him that was bursting apart, but didn’t believe he was getting this specific dream_ \- Cassian had asked her to hit him just an hour ago, destroyed the delicate fresco edge of this very fountain in what had followed.  
  
Nesta sat up.  
  
Moved to curl against his legs, balanced in clear restraint- not on top of him, but in the arrested motion before, a line drawn to claim him focus. But still, still, one hand reached; Nesta’s pale fingers gripped at the line of Cassian’s collar bone, insistent, groundingly present.  
  
Not for the first time, Cassian wished he could bruise.  
  
Power exhausted, wounds might hold. The cut of High Fae teeth Nesta was exceedingly pleased to have found a purpose for, the lingering duality of scent on his skin that insisted both flame and forest thriving- the two things Cassian could keep when he left, no mark of Nesta’s touch held long.  
  
“I want to fight you,” Nesta said, again. “Hand to hand, swords.”  
  
One arm wrapped around her waist, Cassian pulled until she sprawled on top of him, legs swung over his lap, the water rippling gently all around them. _“Swords?”_  
  
She laughed again. The sound echoed all the way to the high golden ceiling, brightening the burn of amber light around them, the fire behind his eyes. “Swords.” Nesta repeated, grip shifting to something just on the pleasing side of _pain_ , “You did ask to teach me to fight.”  
  
Cassian had.  
 _  
A lifetime ago_ \- when she was human, and Cassian was afraid that even the brush of his palm might hurt her. When she was newly fae, and Cassian wanted desperately to give her something, _anything_ , that might make Nesta feel like this life and body were hers.  
  
During the war, when he wanted her to be safe.  
  
Dialed into the direction his thoughts had taken, Nesta shook her head. Not her intention, but Cassian found himself helplessly chasing water drops- her neck, her clavicle, the full curve of one breast.  
  
“I _want,_ ” Nesta said, in that new warm voice that was as full of pleasure as it was amusement, unabashedly shifting until his mouth was higher, where she preferred it, catching sensitive skin with his teeth, “You to see what happens.”  
  
Answer was Cassian sucking one pink nipple into his mouth, Nesta’s hand drifting to his hair to pull.  
  
He didn’t need to say yes- _yes, I’ll teach you, I want to see, I want to watch, I want to dance with you-_ a thousand fantasies of Nesta-blade given form, his heart, his sword- wheeling through violence alive in the bond.  
  
They didn’t get around to it until the next morning.  
  
Faint, early, early daybreak- as much a recognition of Day’s slumbering spring heat as the anticipating pounding with Cassian’s heart, flipping back full of fire with every touch of Nesta at his side.  
  
They faced off in the morning mist, grass wet beneath their feet.  
  
A clearing under blossoming almond trees, beautiful as every part of Day seemed to be, quiet and haunting. It could have been any place- but Cassian knew without asking it was hers. Some sanctuary, natural bolthole of a Librarian of old.  
  
A secret place, where they would not have to hold back.  
  
The sword Nesta summoned to hand was _white_.  
  
Not sunbleached Day pale, but dreaming light- silvered about the edges, star shine poured molten into the shape of a blade to be wielded one-handed, wickedly sharp.  
  
Cassian’s mind leap back to Illyria, to riven volcanic rock, sunset ribbons tossed in the wind. “You got your sword from _Dawn?_ ”  
  
The curve of Nesta’s smile was sharper than the blade she passed into his hand, letting Cassian admire the confusingly entangled engraving: sunbursts and whirling clouds, stars and mountains.  
  
Drawn from its ivory sheathe, it _sang.  
_  
He could have closed his eyes and listened to it- _followed the call to blood, to the sky, to vengeance,_ all the way to each and every enemy of its owner. Cassian knew the song.  
  
“Illyrian steel?” Cassian breathed, assured to a degree that was nearly uncomfortable. “Who made it?”  
  
“It is the last sword of my brothers House,” said Nesta softly, hand pressed without fear to the naked blade. She looked up at him, blue dawn eyes dancing, “It belonged to a High Lady.”  
  
Nesta wanted to fight Cassian- the Librarian of the Ten Thousand wished to face the King of Illyria, armed with a sword forged by the hands of a god _._  
  
Anticipation was going to _rattle him apart._  
  
“Sword of the Setting Sun,” he murmured, rewarded by the twist of her grin. “Does it have a name?”  
  
She plucked the sword from his grip. Danced back and away in motion of pure fae grace- but the footsteps, the strange formality as Nesta tucked away her free hand, said human. “She was erased.” The blade came up in salute, straight and high, “I like perhaps, _memory_.”  
  
Cassian drew his own blade, watched her bright gaze trace it.  
  
“ _Ryzaylan,”_ He whispered, and struck.Memory, in one of the six ways Illyrians spoke it. _Blood-remembered-vengeance.  
_  
Nesta caught the full force of the strike one-armed, and didn’t waver. Immediately, achingly, Cassian understood what was meant when Nesta said, _I want you to see it happen.  
_  
He knew what she fought like- pure wildness, a storm in pale, beautiful skin. It was Cassian in her heart, in her soul, that had told Nesta _take the knife, let that fucker into your guard.  
_  
All Nesta herself, to have gone for his throat. To snap the neck of the Lord of Ice Strewn Forest in a single motion and keep moving as water flowed- like sheet lightening across a summer sky.  
  
Some human memory Cassian didn’t comprehend: the little mocking bow, the salute, the off center balance of only one arm. The raging, impossible speed as she blurred around him: deadly High Fae grace.  
  
The moment Cassian pushed back and Nesta was forced to untangle their swords and strike: free arm swinging out, torso bending, blade dropped to her other hand- the motions of a body with longer reach, more to guard, stance abruptly _Illyrian_ , compensation for the weight of a two-handed sword she didn’t hold.  
  
Cassian threw back his head and laughed.  
  
Earned the sharp collision of Nesta’s shoulder to the chest for freezing up, a clang as much as his happiness announcing the sword she’d knocked from his hand.  
  
“Does that happen _every time_?”  
  
Nesta carried the motion, knocked him straight to the ground. Pushed all the air from Cassian’s lung as she simply _fell_ , landing on top of him, as he laughed and laughed, gasping out the noise.  
  
“I have broken my wrist _four times_ ,” Nesta growled, holding onto Cassian’s shirt with two fisted hands. “Why do you carry a cavalry shield?”  
  
Cassian carried the densest shield he could bear into battle because he’d once had a pike shatter through a normal Illyrian round shield and _get caught in his ribs-_ but the graphic sense memory of choking on blood had no place here, Nesta’s blue eyes dancing above him.  
  
A dream, this moment that could not be touched: dewy grass soft beneath his wings, the warmth of her body chasing away cool morning air as she pinned him in place, sun rising gold caught in her hair. _  
_  
He reached for her face, groaning when Nesta neatly nipped the fingertip Cassian stroked over her bottom lip.  
  
“You move faster than other High Fae.”  
  
Nesta shrugged. “You’re stronger than any other Illyrian alive.”  
  
He shook his head- ignored the way she said it, like it was a fact, warmth blooming. Said quietly, as if that would hide the surging anticipation, her cheek tilted against his palm, “You’re stronger.”  
  
Impossibly strong- a scramble of words flowed, senseless and true in silence between them. Cassian loved that strength. Cassian remembered that strength with his entire body, and would if he lived until the death of light.  
  
It was with the knowledge that she was letting him that Cassian tipped and rolled them in a burst of speed, Nesta’s laugh ringing out as her unbound hair flung across the grass.  
  
“ _Lucky,_ ” Nesta purred, making herself comfortable, a torturous little motion of tucking her legs tight around him, craning that long, beautiful neck to pillow her head on one arm, “I don’t care to fight anyone else.”  
  
He didn’t the willpower to hover above her, to not bury his face in the curve of Nesta’s shoulder. It was to soft skin he murmured, curiously, “Helion?”  
  
“An experiment.”  
  
Cassian knew she could feel his grin, “You kicked his ass.”  
  
She shuffled again, shifting until Cassian had the presence of mind to notice daylight had burst through the trees, sun risen blinding. A silent _thank you_ , a soft touch to the back of his neck from Nesta as he blocked the glare to her eyes with one wing.  
  
She laughed, quiet, to herself. Went on eventually, fingertips wandering to blindly trace the promise marks inked at the top of Cassian’s spine. “Only seems fair. It’s your instincts.”  
  
The skill of five centuries, shared. The bond was made of them, Lucien had told Cassian, _you make it._ That he could protect her always, everything Cassian had to give- it made the most sense of all that Nesta could simply take it.  
  
It belonged to her.  
  
“Again?” Cassian asked.  
  
Her reply was a snarl, playful but terrifying, and Nesta rolling them to force Cassian back down in the grass.  
  
They did not destroy the meadow, but at least one tree was worse for wear by the time the sun was high in the sky.  
  
Cassian had acquired a black eye, more joy than his heart seemed able to hold, and the startling knowledge that Nesta had lived in Day long enough to be entirely, utterly pleased at the idea of making love right there, bare in the bright daylight.  
  
He was still half lost to any reality outside that knowledge when he returned to Illyria hours later, shoved, mouth bruised red, by a laughing Nesta’s hands through yet another useful Library door.  
  
Impossibly, perfectly, _heart-wrenchingly,_ time continued that way. Ceasing work after a long day, dragged out of his office by Aayla, only to find Nesta already asleep in his bed. Coming to the Library only to realize Nesta was working with a napping child slung around her torso, one chubby brown baby fist holding onto the collar of her shirt. A hundred soft moments, a thousand new memories.  
  
Letters and long nights, clear roles and duties, but this, always _this.  
_  
What Cassian had learned in this surreal, most dreamlike version of his life as days bled to months that followed: without clear reason or cause, across leagues and miles, their hearts would sync. Breathing in unison. Phantom awareness- an echo of exactly the state of their bodies.  
  
He’d never heard of such a thing and couldn’t ask; but what he learned, was that Nesta’s iron self-control had tangible limits, and this was where they started.  
  
Never before had Cassian felt wonder that High Fae could winnow. A skill that didn’t run in Illyrian blood- the approximation Azriel was capable of a such darker, shadowed thing- a necessity Cassian had never felt the lack of.  
  
Until her breath would catch, and his heart would stutter.  
  
Until Nesta started appearing out of nowhere, beside him.  
  
It wasn’t a secret, but Cassian also hadn’t said a thing. Too long an instinct that silence was safety, too proud a feeling that would burst his heart. No one who really knew Cassian didn’t know that he belonged to Nesta Archeron, body and soul.  
  
It was just _theirs-_ for about two months. Spring to summer, blue mountain wildflowers woven by the dozen into her hair.  
  
Two months, until someone said something.  
  
Unerring quick, Lucien dropped the report in his hand and dragged down the open collar of Cassian’s shirt, baring one shoulder. The mottle of red bruise that would be gone in less than an hour, the precise shape of high fae teeth sunk into his back. “Is that a _bite mark_?”  
  
“ _Cassian. What the hell?”  
_  
Cassian slapped away his hand, but the damage was done. Embarrassment and unmitigated, absolute pride flooded Cassian in equal measure. He _should_ have changed his shirt- would have, but it smelt like her.  
  
Air sparking with flashes of ember, Lucien’s utter lack of shame to tilt back his head and yell, “Az!”  
  
Azriel, who was down the hallway, nonetheless traveled by shadow in less than a heartbeat to stand at his husbands side. Appeared already reaching, one scarred hand to run up Lucien’s spine, head dipped to accept the arm flung around his neck.  
  
Lucien melted into his side, face distinctly _dangerous. “Az,”_ He purred, “Was a certain Lady of the Library recently here?”  
  
Slow to spread, the shit-eating grin on Azriel’s face blazed as his eyes flicked to Cassian- arms crossed, only half hiding his own smile, blood on his shirt. “Nesta?” He paused to brush a kiss over Lucien’s brow, lingering, “She’s been around.”  
  
Lucien began to laugh.  
  
The abject cackle turned to a bellow when Azriel, cheating with a shadow’s grace, slipped through nowhere to appear at Cassian’s side, and poke the half-healed mark. He raised one brow, already too delighted, before Cassian slapped a hand over his mouth.  
  
“ _No_. Nope, no. Az.”  
  
Around Cassian’s palm, Azriel said anyway, “You owe Aayla three pounds of good Day chocolate, sweetheart.”  
  
“And a bolt of silk,” Lucien grumbled dramatically, tone ruined by more laughter as Azriel shook off Cassian just in time for Cassian, King and leigelord of Illyria, to punch his friend.  
  
Lightly. Playfully. Cassian couldn’t not smile about Nesta, _but_ \- “How much of my life are you betting on with my honor guard? _Treason,_ you assholes.”  
  
“Need to charge Nesta first,” Azriel said, because happiness had made him so much worse, “She’s the one damaging the _King.”  
_  
Despite himself, Cassian laughed. It set off Azriel, who once more had his arms full of an overly pleased Lucien. They were terrible, they were so very dear to him- they were both a walking denial of any dignity Cassian might scrape together, but he still tried to cut Lucien off when he opened his mouth.  
 _  
“No.”_  
  
“Cas,” Lucien said softly, all the more lethal. “I just wanted to know if that meant we finally had a clear answer.” He waited, fucker that he was, until Azriel’s laugh fell silent to drawl. “The punching thing, _totally sexual?”  
_  
Azriel, credit to his long-earned wisdom, scooped Lucien up into his arms. Flicked a one-handed Illyrian salute at Cassian, and carried his husband, roaring with laughter, from the room.  
Echoing, happy as it left Lucien gasping for air- but not, incidentally, oxygen depriving enough to force quiet the delighted aside he didn’t quite whisper as Azriel kicked the door shut after them. “Did it seem strangely placed to you? From behind?”  
  
Cassian buried his own grin behind his hand. Laughed in sheer chagrined happiness to the empty room, and made a note to give Aayla a raise.  


***  
  
  


A magic land of immortal people, Prythian believed in stories.  
  
In all tales there might be a shred of truth, remembrance escaped to live on in fiction where schoolbooks failed; and all truth, in the end, made a home in the Library.  
  
Some said it had come first. A nowhere that was everywhere, an infinity contained in an ancient soul. Elsewhere. Beyond. Accessed through Prythian, but no part of the primordial kingdom where immortal knowledge went to rest belonged fully to the corporeal world.  
  
Did the people come first, or the stories they told?  
  
Did the Gods not speak in words as well?  
  
Did the sky not sing, the land dance, the ocean dream? Were the stories of the Library not, in the end, so very much more than words on paper?  
  
Fifty years mourning, and the people of Prythian were glad to know the Library once more breathed.  
 _  
Librarian,_ they whispered. For no arcana of the Ten Thousand needed any other name, to join the Order of the Library was to become sacred.  
  
The books appeared as though they’d been there all along.  
  
The exact story to sooth a crying child, hours past their bedtime, gleaming faintly in the dark. A cookbook whose recipes were written not in careful typeset, but the lost handwriting of a great-grandmother, smelling still of her perfume. Perfectly accurate almanacs, love stories, tales that made the young rise in the morning dreaming of the shape their long, long lives would take.  
  
The Library served Prythian, it’s Librarian a conduit, divine.  
  
Medicine improved a threefold with the recovery of lost research. It became known that all children could reach for the doors; an hour in the company of other’s their age, quiet story time or screaming chaos, education if they could find it nowhere else. Researchers and writers, poets and alchemists- the Library needed life, and many flocked to reach its walls.  
  
Books appeared exactly when needed, and left much the same, each embossed with same gold gleaming on black seal: flame and sword, knowledge in hand with justice.  
  
The blade it was whispered, _changed._ Hungry in autumn, bright beauty in summer, the turn of the year in a righteous curve.  
  
No books appeared to ease the life of the High Lady of Night.  
  
But there was no lack to notice as Feyre Archeron’s heart burned with love under her starry sky, ocean air and the bloom of jasmine carrying her through seasons in her beloved’s arms.  
  
With time flowed color: joy red back into the paintings of the faeries in her studio, the Rainbow’s youngest set to right. Vermillion, scarlet, ruby, for the bright murals of walls that always seemed to feature wings, a flattery Feyre carried warm beneath her ribs back to the High Lord.  
  
What reason did she have to reach for stories living one?  
  
Why would she look at the Illyrian wings painted in alleys, strung massive in ash, and _wonder?_  
  
Why would Feyre Archeron, beloved and youthful, happy and hale, grown not on the ways of fae power know- red had never been the color of the Court of Night.  
  
Safe after two wars, angry and aching but youthful vibrant, Feyre threw herself into life, ignored it simmering around her. She would never forgive, she would never _forget-_ but she had an eternity to love and would do so.  
  
Of course the Rainbow bloomed in frantic color, she could not possibly be the only artist hungry for wonder. It was not strange that people sometimes whispered as she walked by. Feyre was High Lady, and she was not about to let that office stop her from walking among her people, living a completely _normal_ life. 

It made perfect sense that Rhysand was treated with greater deference, a more distant respect. The people of Velaris had now watched what they knew had happened twice, that their High Lord would sacrifice his very body for them.  
  
She looked at her life, long, long as it would be, and thought it would _all_ make sense. Feyre had time, endless time, and she imagined in the scope of a faery lifetime that things would eventually return to where they belonged.  
  
She had to believe it- because they had _lived_.  
  
Survived to come home, and Feyre believed that someday, her whole family would too.  
  
But there was one thing that couldn’t be buried, one thing Rhys wouldn’t speak of. The pain Feyre saw every day, growing as he walked beneath the murals with her, eyes hard. Winnowing and then walking up the final stairs to get the House of Wind, no ease in the sky left.  
  
She caught him looking so very often, from their rooftop, from the balconies, from the yawning beauty of the places Rhys showed her, built by his ancestors. Old sprawling country piles, enormous hunting estates, the sacred palace of Sangravah, the island oasis off the coast, mountain lodges, and pale stone edifices wrought of electrum gilded moonstone.  
  
It didn’t matter where they were, nothing stopped Rhysand from turning his face to the horizon, silent in the dark.  
  
The wars were a wound neither could touch, closing in time. Feyre wouldn’t speak of Amarantha, Tamlin, Keir, Beron, Cassian, Azriel- wouldn’t drag forth fresh pain when every brush of wind had Rhys cocking his head, leaning into it like a lover.  
  
Unlike the past, horror they’d triumphed over, _cost and pain_ ; this Feyre was sure, she could fix.  
 _  
This_ she would fix, would she realized that her own wings wouldn’t come. The magic was there. Spring blooming mad, mercurial bright- she could feel it, see it, could transform into any shape she desired, but her Illyrian wings wouldn’t come.  
  
A fucking curse if she’d ever felt one, and the Cursebreaker _would_ find answers.  
  
Amren laughed in her face.  
  
Silver eyes nearly as bright as the matching gleam of hammered metal that draped over her torso, blazing in the sun on white sand beach where Feyre had found her.  
  
The laugh was familiar, and not fully kind.  
  
“Girl,” She’d drawled, gaze dragged slow from the tranquil teal waters where Varian was swimming, “Curses don’t just _happen._ Did someone steal a great deal of blood from you recently? Hold you prisoner? Harvest bone and flesh?”  
  
Flushed under the hot sun, Feyre shook her head.  
  
Amren settled back into the sand, pearl dusted head propped on one arm. “Rhysand cannot fly because his wings were ripped off.” She went on, steady in the face of Feyre’s flinch. “If you cannot fly as well, that’s a question of your power.”  
  
Feyre sank down with a huff. Summoned up a chilled bottle of very expensive wine that Amren cast a more pleased expression upon before ripping out the cork with a ferocious twist.  
She waited until Amren took a sip. “Can you do what you did for Nesta, tell what’s happening inside me?”  
  
Amren set the bottle back in the sand.  
  
“No.”  
  
Grip on her own legs white knuckled, Feyre made herself breathe out. At least once. Looked at the water, clear, bright- realized, belatedly, that Varian was wearing absolutely nothing under the waves, and snapped back to Amren. “ _No?_ ”  
  
“No.” Amren repeated, drawn out, melodious. “And that’s not what I did for Nesta.”  
  
“You helped her with her _power._ ”  
  
“Nothing in the world can touch her power.” Amren rolled her eyes. “I just pointed out the normal parameters. Which you don’t have and neither, in the end, did she.”  
  
“ _Amren”_ -  
  
She flung her other arm over her head as well, full body stretch of a cat, sand sticking to skin where it was bared through silk and silver. Indolent, dangerous, her toes in the surf. Her voice cut to the quick. “I am not what I was, but I still _am_.”  
  
Gently, slow as she’d always been for this prickly dragon of a friend, a sister, Feyre reached for her hand. “You’ll always be my friend. Family. Always- you don’t have to be”-  
 _  
“Feyre.”_ She sat up, quicksilver faery fast. “Was I _family_ when Illyria rose and Rhysand decided I was too weak to be Second? A treaty in blood and I came home to _Rhysand_ courting candidates to do my job.”  
  
“No, no Amren, that was because you’re family. No one would ever take your place, but I didn’t want to lose anyone else. We never wanted you to leave. I was afraid”-  
  
“You were a child. You are a child.” Abruptly, Amren reached out to grip Feyre’s chin. “I like you girl, but you’re not done cooking yet. Come visit me in three hundred years, Tarquin has gifted me an island.”  
  
“But-“  
  
Quick as the touch came it was gone, silk fluttering in breeze. Amren sprawled elegant in the sand, drinking straight from the bottle of sparkling wine. “Until then, you best go before Varian decides to enforce those blood rubies whose promise you’re tempting. He’s very strong.”  
  
Lump in her throat, cheeks burning, Feyre had winnowed away.  
  
To the stairs of the House, where Rhys wouldn’t see her tears.  
  
It was there, seated, head in her hands, that the book appeared beside her. Red cover, gold lettering. _Fables of the North: tales of honor._  
  
She flipped through it, smiled a little at the circuitous routes of fairytales as told by faeries, full of blood and love. Not at all suitable for children, like mortal fables, half-remembered. Decided to return it to the library, on the other side of the House.  
  
Her eyes wouldn’t be red by the time she went home.  
  
Without Bryxasis, the yawning chasm of the High Lord’s library now lived full of light, rainbow gilded down into stacks written in languages the Priestesses planned to spend years translating, knowledge that had been lost to the monster’s trap.  
  
Feyre spent less quiet hours here now than she had in the past, but the young faery behind that counter still smiled at her approach- at least, Feyre thought it was a smile, the impression of one on a wood elves face, eery fire eyes and barklike face unmoving horror.

Feyre held in her instinctive recoil.  
  
But the librarian wouldn’t take the book, flipped it instead and pointed a reverent hand to the back cover, her leaves shaking. A seal spanned it, lovingly rendered: fireburst curling beautiful, overlaid with an embossed sword, blade raised high and proud.  
  
Feyre had to go find a librarian who could speak.  
  
The answer she got remained pale: they were a library, but this book belonged to _the Library_ , and would return itself when need was ended.  
  
Feyre took it home, and wrote Morrigan.  
  
Reply, as it normally was, came swift, littered with jokes and soft asides, warm as though Morrigan were in the room. Not the Library- the Library of the Ten Thousand, in Helion’s domain. The magic heart of Prythian’s knowledge. Morrigan had never been, but seemed to think the Librarian was just a normal faery, a scholar, maybe. A guide. 

_No one is afraid of a Librarian._ Feyre could almost hear her laugh.  
  
For the Library gave knowledge by knowing your heart. You may present your case, state what you desire, but the Library only provided, in the end, what you truly needed. The Librarian helped that process.  
  
Feyre needed Rhysand to smile again, to kiss her neck as he flew her through cold skies, to be as he had been.  
  
She didn’t particularly wish to go to Day- where at least one of her stubborn, lost sisters was living, doing gods knew what. Feyre had been barred from looking for so long that now, it seemed impossible. She’d come home eventually, and Feyre would welcome her return.  
  
They were _sisters.  
_  
But that wasn’t what mattered now.  
  
Feyre made her plan.  
  
Rhys had to go participate in the religious rights of Sangravah- they weren’t sure how to hold the ceremony with two sovereigns, but Feyre had shrugged it off. Less incense to wash out of her hair, less blood to have smeared on her face by ancient, eery crones. She’d promised Rhys a surprise when he returned, made holy with the glow of power.  
  
She could glow for him without any help.  
  
But this would be better- this, answers from a treasure trove, a way back to who they’d been, laughing across the sky together.  
  
She had enough Day in her veins to get in- surely the Library, built to serve, would let her back out.  
  
It was perfect.  
  
But Feyre didn’t pick up the book.  
  
Didn’t read the stories skimmed. Real honor- as it had been long taught to young immortals, tiny children who’d remember these maternal tales- does not break. Once violated, cannot be mended. To rule is to serve, and tools of magic that aid are given only ever to the truly worthy.  
  
She brushed a hand over the seal, but didn’t stare long enough to notice what tugged at her memory: the sword, in perfect familiar detail. Two handed grip, whirling pattern of promise up the cross guard, blade forged of a fallen star.  
  
Feyre went to sleep dreaming of the cold wind whose voice she’d never heard, awoke steeled to ask for exactly what she wanted and never imagined, even for a moment, that she was walking into her sister’s home.  
  


***  
  


Nesta’s first formal, diplomatic action as Librarian of the Ten Thousand, Second of Day, Sword of the Setting Sun, blessed _ya’shansri_ , Cauldron-Born, was a peace treaty.  
  
But despite the blatant throwing around of her newly felt weight, that she had, in fact, done the impossible and made seven Courts recognize an eighth Kingdom, it was her actions in Autumn that changed everything.  
  
Nesta had done what a thousand Librarians before her had- witnessed with her own eyes the passing of history, so that it was written as truth, become as story. The words of a Librarian could not be forgotten, tales told and unspooled before her born on pages to be read by any and all.  
  
She recognized the rule of Vanserra, and so too, Prythian had to.  
  
And just like that, the letters began.  
  
She could have thrown them away. Nesta suspected some years, she might- the Library was beholden to none, the public collection doors open. With permission, any High Lord could walk in.  
Nobles and Lords, farmers and students; they didn’t need to write her for information, they could ask it of the Library _themselves.  
_  
But she found, glowering, that she couldn’t resist. Nesta was one, perpetual, singular, where there had been five hundred once. It was entirely possible sixteen centuries ago a Librarian _would_ have been dispatched, to broker out what was happening between the bog farmers of Spring and the fast encroaching forest.  
  
For Kallias to learn what the last Winter High Lady’s crown had looked like, thousands of years past, despite the object living in Summer’s treasure trove.  
  
She began to go herself.  
  
Out into the world, to help people. She’d been startled to learn how her title worked, the armor Nesta wore walking in white. It was Helion who untangled what the Library had long insisted: _sacred, unnamed, chosen and choice.  
_  
When Kallias, blushing, refused to use her given name.  
  
It was the height of dishonor to call a Librarian by something so normal as their _name._ Understood that the Library was a destiny and a choice, a refuge and a dream- she belonged to nothing else now, unless she explicitly chose to. Many before her had given themselves new names entirely, old lives shed.

And so Nesta escaped the long cast shadow of _Archeron_ , her little sister’s dubious, haunting reputation a cloak freed to the wind.  
  
She swam out into the ocean with sirens and listened for all of Prythian to Bryxasis as she meant to be heard, beneath the waves, a nightmare no longer. Returned to Dawn all that had been salvaged of Dusk, incense burnt for a long lost High Lady whose shrine Erebus was not ready to face.  
  
Watched Elain dance in circles and fall in love, prophecy an accepted norm, a holy sentiment in the client Kingdom of the Stone Fae. Laughed not at all when Ysandr, resolute as his mountain, asked her blessing for a century of courtship. The highest respect that could be given, love grown slow like gold, a hundred years to prove he was worthy of her sister, would treat Elain as she deserved.  
  
Met every child Cassian had ensured had a life and future, from Ramin blinking in his cradle, black northern eyes wide, to fearless Lirial, sandy-winged and already dauntless with a blade at nine. Lucia, who sleepily called her _mama._ All eighteen of them, who Nesta would kill for. To whom she was almost a parent, these wards raised by nursemaids and a fleet of nannies, but also- by each and every single person Cassian loved.  
  
Eighteen, who knew this: they were safe with Nesta. Safe in their mountains, safe beneath the sky, beloved of their King and all those he trusted.  
  
Beloved, also, of the man they called _Uncle._ Erebus, who’d not just waited for a generation to call upon him in need, but introduced himself. Made himself useful to the fledgling kingdom, dangerous strength keenly recognized, useful as his long memory.  
  
And so Illyria grew strong, a land where warrior children’s first pets were animated monsters of bone sung to shape. Where children mountain-borne and wildling forest fae alike were educated together, through Library doors.  
  
Slow in endless years, Prythian’s woken gods emerged, and Nesta found them.  
  
The Green Man of Spring, who wished only to bloom once a year and rest more, in reverie. Winter’s Immortal Beasts, beautiful and wise. The creatures of flame and song who burst each dawn over their Court.  
  
Never again, would they be locked away.  
  
Never again- but it also meant many more _letters.  
_  
Somewhere between helping Helion break up the latest feud between Day’s wine growing regions with much amusement, blowing up her second alchemy lab, and spending several weeks with Illyrian priestesses learning braid patterns so that she could properly do Alyssar’s hair before she flew through lightening storms- Nesta decided to stop reading missives from High Lords complaining _at all._

The Library, with something like giddiness, gave her a gift instead.  
  
A tree indoors as though remembering the moment she’d broken her own heart wide with pomegranate seeds, canopy impossible. When Nesta found the Tree, she’d made Helion spend an afternoon pulling down its unique flowers and fruit with her. Fruit for truth, flowers for flattery, every possible shade and shape in between: where the Lords of Prythian could reach for Library aid, but only Nesta could choose to take a bite. 

It didn’t tell her the words in exactitude, but fed her the _truth.  
_  
Intention hiding in whatever story was told, meaning as a millennia of knowledge knew it.

The favorite place of the High Lord of Day and his Second, beneath the ever-changing, beautiful boughs.  
  
Helped, Nesta thought, by the fact that since its second month of glorious existence, the library in which it lived had smelt of _smoke._

It began with a cluster of blackened flowers that rained down all at once when their branch was touched, every request from a single source. Their origin would have been clear without the color, each orchid’s flourish for lie, for lie, _lie_ told Nesta Archeron exactly who’d tried to speak to her.  
  
Flowers made of entrapped words burnt like flash paper.  
  
The High Lord of Night sent enough personal requests Nesta could have carpeted the hall with them, lying black blooms to glitter beneath the selection of chaises and enormous pillows that seemed to grow daily.  
  
She burnt every one.  
  
Waiting, in a particularly vicious corner of her mind, for the day Rhysand would be stupid enough to try in person. She _truly_ did not care what he wanted- Nesta answered the requests of citizens in every kingdom and court equally. The common folk of Night were restless and dissatisfied, but not for reasons the Library could aid. 

Dreaming, still with a fear that Nesta knew would fade but never die, of what might happen, when he got tired of _asking._

What exactly Amarantha had done to disable the Library not even Nesta knew. It had be conveyed to her, impressions sluggish, words too slow to speak, early in her time in Day that it _couldn’t_ happen again. 

Fifty years shut and quiet, the Library hadn’t just begun healing, it had reformed.  
  
Something ancient, but also something new, now wholly realized with a Librarian.  
  
Something that would never allow itself to be touched by violent hands again.  
  
She trusted it- _believed it, was it_ \- but Nesta still wondered. She never found or felt the full breadth those arcane defenses until the day the High Lady of Night snuck into the public circulation, and went to her knees.  
  
It started with a shudder. Her feelings muddled with a power that didn’t necessarily feel the way living things did, for all that it was full of _feelings_ , a rage molten and dark as her heart could be.  
 _  
Trespassed violated circumvention-_ a darkness that Nesta realized indicated _swallowing._ It might fling books or artifacts, dispel- but the Library was bloodbound to Prythian, and the continents High Lords to it.  
  
A High Lady had spoken lies in its walls, arrived unwelcome to the Librarian, _and the Library wanted to eat her.  
_  
Consume each story, all shreds of knowledge, drink down every single drop of power and unwrite her. _  
_  
It cut through the tide of surprise, of anger, of Nesta’s own unmoored heart.  
  
Feyre was always going to come.  
  
There was no one else in the sun-flooded, blue walled collection. Three stories of glass and beauty, blue and gold painted by the hands of a long ago famous Dawn Court master. It was empty but for her sister, who’d dropped with dramatic grace and begun to speak aloud.  
  
Not diplomacy, not the laws of their own Court or Continent, this was what Rhysand had taught Feyre: the imagined power of her grandeur, the artful lie of a humble entrance. 

Feyre’s human eyes were even more suited for it than the High Lord’s monstrous, perfect face.  
  
And the Library was purring, grumbling, _seething_ as it showed Nesta, those blue eyes filled with tears right on time.  
  
The Library understood. The Librarian would handle this. Personally.  
  
“My name is Feyre Archeron,” Feyre was saying, hands open on her knees, for all that her entire person bristled with barely leashed magical might. The second stupid, worthless thing Rhysand had taught her sister- not control, but to use emotions as a _trigger_.  
  
“I have been called Cursebreaker. The first High Lady of the Night Court. Cauldron-Blessed.” Nesta, in the shadows, out of sight on the second floor, fought the urge to snort. “But I have come to the Library just as a woman. The man I love is hurt. Healed but still bleeding, not himself anymore. I ask the Library for help. For knowledge.”  
  
An ocean of black blooms, not a single one from Feyre’s words.  
  
Did Rhysand _ever_ tell her the whole truth?  
  
A mirror to the bitter taste in Nesta’s mouth, Feyre’s fists were clenched. She rose to her feet, addressed her words to the high stained glass dome overhead. “I need help. To find what was lost and stolen. He was _betrayed- by- by his friend. His brother. And it was not- it cannot be punished but I need- I need to fix this-“  
_  
“Cassian died.”  
  
Nesta stepped out of shadow, into the blazing, unforgiving light. Feyre had not come as High Lady, but arrived in her own chosen comfort, as herself- Illyrian leather. A bow. A sword. Helion could have legally and with the backing of their entire land declared war on the Night Court solely for the action of another ruler crossing his borders armed without permission.  
  
Her youngest sister had never cared for consequences.  
  
Her eyes wide, Feyre took one look at her and understood at once. Brutal Day Court white, gold like bones up her arms; the plants and books and world in this room that seemed to twist toward Nesta in love, but never too close, adoring flowers to their sun.  
  
Flushed features hardened, furious. 

“ _He tried to_ -“

“No.” Nesta interrupted. “He didn’t _try_ anything. Cassian freed his people, with the blessing of his gods took what they’d given Rhysand. He is Illyrian no longer, and absolutely nothing in these walls will change that.”  
  
“He was born Illyrian,” Feyre snarled, shoulders shaking, “Nesta, you can’t-“  
  
They had nearly the same face, in the harshness of the sun. Their mother’s face. Her unforgiving sky-blue eyes, their wretched father’s full mouth.  
  
Nesta counted it a different way now; the sharp lines she shared with Erebus, softened by the heart shaped visage of Elain- Feyre, an in-between, a might have been.  
  
Her baby foolish sister, who she despised nearly so much as she’d adored, in this moment.  
  
“I didn’t do anything.” Nesta said, flatly, and it was true. Rhysand’s choices had been made hundreds of years before the Acheron’s were even born. “He is not _Illyrian-_ he was half, born of his mother’s love and the bloodline that drove her people to extinction. He chose the wrong lineage to serve. The sky will not open to him.”  
  
She walked down the stairs, across the gold that sang and the marble that remembered, until her feet carried her to stand right in front of her sister, ink stained hands clenched between them.  
  
“I also know,” Nesta said, and she could hear it as Cassian described it, that her voice could draw _blood,_ “It will not open for you. You will never fly on borrowed wings again.”  
  
Feyre crumpled- Feyre _laughed,_ and she sounded like Nesta when she did.  
  
“You are _loving_ this, aren’t you? You’ve always hated Rhys- hated that”-  
  
“I don’t speak to you as a sister,” Nesta said, response the instant clack of sharp, High Fae teeth snapping together. “You don’t ask for one, so I won’t be now- I speak to you as the Librarian of the Ten Thousand, the words of infinity before and behind me: I don’t think you understand. _What was done cannot be undone.”  
  
“You might not want a sister,”_ Feyre snapped, and it burned. _Oh how it burned_ , molten melt in her bones, in Nesta’s marrow like magma- Nesta had always wanted a sister, had died for her sisters, and the thanks she’d only ever gotten from Feyre was to be forgotten. “But I _am_ your sister. And I’m asking for your help- our children, how will we even teach them if they’re born with wings?’  
  
Nesta, who could never, would never have children of her unchangeable body- Nesta, who with Cassian, would help defend and raise a thousand Illyrian young with pride- Nesta, who’d insured that every child of Day could read, who’d opened every door, to every library to any child with need across their land- bit her cheek until she tasted blood.  
  
“Your children won’t be Illyrian either,” She snapped.  
  
They’d abandoned an entire culture to the slaughter when they couldn’t control it- but of course, _of course_ when it actually hurt the High House of Night would double back to reach for what was precious.  
  
Feyre shrieked, a wordless, utterly human display of temper that Nesta hadn’t heard since she was eleven years old. “ _How can you say that?_ ”  
  
There were tears in her eyes.  
  
They should have made her pause- in another life, perhaps they would have.  
  
But in this world, where Feyre would freely say Elain was _unstable_ , where she treated Nesta like a volatile horror, where she seemed to think the cost of Cassian’s life was comparable to Rhysand losing just one of his many, iniquitous skills- in this world, fury raged through Nesta so fast she couldn’t breathe.  
  
“ _Five hundred years,_ Feyre,” Nesta snarled back. Her sister wanted a sister, well then, she could have all of Nesta, and maybe even a bit of temper would make her see the light of day.  
“Have you questioned for _even a second,_ why Cassian taking Illyria _worked?_ That he could raise an army of women and bastards and be crowned _King_? That Rhysand, managed to train, what? Half a platoon of female warriors in five centuries?”  
  
“He was a _half-blood_ ,” Feyre yelled back, “The entire world wanted him dead!”  
 _  
“He is the most powerful High Lord alive,”_ Nesta roared.  
  
The sound of it echoed, the Library walls responding keenly to her savagery, shifting around the sisters. Pages rattling on pages, vines that twined window panes growing at a whole season’s speed to _reach_ \- the Librarian was a sanctity, her anger a siren song.  
  
Nesta lowered her voice, if only for her home.  
  
Hissed the truth to her recalcitrant, utterly impossible sister. “He didn’t bother to rule the Court of Nightmares, so they killed and killed and _killed. He didn’t bother, so he needed Illyria to keep them in check. Why do you think bastards were treated so badly?_ The Night Court farmed Illyrian bloodlines for _centuries. Who do you think built the camps?_ Keir would have bowed to power, but Rhys didn’t want to wield it. You think he didn’t know they’d die in those mountains? _Why do you think he didn’t go with them?”  
_  
“Cassian ripped the wings from his back,” Feyre said, through clenched teeth, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Broke his spine.”  
  
“And wasn’t he walking the very next day?”  
  
“I felt _his bones break.”  
_  
Nesta’s laugh was as empty as the Hewn City. “Then you have some minute idea of what I felt, when Rhysand killed him by inches, broke him with power until his blood vessels burst, _until he ruptured.”_

Feyre drew herself up, for once fully the High Lady war and Rhysand had made her. “You’re not the only one who has felt a mate die.”  
  
It lasted all of a second, gravitas unwinding into a sadness that Nesta couldn’t touch, any more than Feyre seemed able to listen to her with comprehension.  
  
“Cassian-“  
  
And Nesta couldn’t bear it.  
  
That her sister could look at her like that, could say Cassian’s name with affection, like she didn’t believe his life was of negligible, like he was her’s to _mourn-_

“Let me be abundantly clear,” Nesta heard herself sneer, heartbeat the loudest thing in the world. “Rhysand did not just fuckup as a friend and a High Lord- he betrayed the Gods of his _birth._ The very Gods you and he woke when you opened the Book, when you fucked with the Cauldron. They will never sleep again. _Rhysand will never fly again_. Never hear the wind, never be welcomed by the sky, never so much as listen to the song of his own star steel sword.”  
  
The Library, in the back of her mind, tried to soothe. Ink flowed onto paper, water to the ashes of burnt and unforgettable past. A thousand leagues away Cassian had just broken the cup in his hand, was gasping for air along with her.  
 _  
Nesta? Sweetheart?_

“And no amount of Spring in your remade veins will allow you to transform into something you’re not. Those mountains do not belong to you, those people are not yours, _and their gifts and wings and power are not for you.”_

Through Cassian, shuddering now, as the wind howled, Nesta could feel the _mountains._ Illyria was alive as her Library, and down the thread between two hearts, it sang for her: glory.  
  
No higher gift, no greater purpose, than the defense of what was loved.  
  
That Feyre was doing the same thing, alone, filled her mouth with cinders.  
  
“You really do hate me,” Her sister muttered, half-aloud, “Rhys always”-  
  
“I love you,” said Nesta, just as quiet, twice as brutal, “I was there when you were _born. You will always be my sister.”  
  
“_You can do both,” Feyre’s dark tone said _Tamlin_ , and the utterly anxious pound of Nesta’s heart began to _hurt._

_Sweetheart. Dawn undimmed. My sword, my heart. No, Nesta-  
_  
Feyre did not understand.  
  
Nesta squared her shoulders. Straightened her aching spine. Stilled the Library around heras she faced Feyre, head held high. “No. _I have died for you._ Fey, I will slit the throat of anyone who touches you, but I won’t change. I will never choose as you have chosen.”  
  
Rhysand had said exactly one half-true thing about Nesta in the time Feyre’s affection had forced them into proximity: Illyrian at heart. Wrongly said and wrongly put, but Nesta could parse the soul of it.  
  
Honor.  
  
Bound in iron, in blood, in ink. In her bones unbroken.  
  
But it wasn’t the honor of a country she didn’t have claim to- it was the same thing that burnt up her heart to see Elain marry a Lord to keep them safe, twin of what had given Erebus a will to live and kill, the urge that pulled Elain across Pythian, wherever visions took her.  
  
The only reason Nesta hadn’t killed Rhysand where he stood, for even thinking he could touch Cassian.  
  
Nesta Archeron could never be someone else, and her baby sister could never fully accept that both the remaining Archeron’s were very different people than she had imagined.  
  
That was the ending.  
  
But Feyre- stubborn, wonderful, terrible little Feyre- said in a voice like ice, “What is so wrong about my _choices_?”  
  
Nesta wanted to say a hundred things. 

_You thought you could fly with the Legions as one of them. You married a man more than five centuries older and let him shape you._

_You thought I was a drunk. You thought Cassian would fuck anything that moved. You thought no love of Lucien’s mattered but a mate bond. You though Azriel loved Morrigan and that would be their happiness._

_You forgave both of your kidnappers, you opened the Book, low fae scare you, you believe every single word Rhysand says._

Instead, what came out was, “You didn’t believe Elain.”  
  
Cassian was in the air now, and the only reason Nesta could still speak was the ghostly, distant feeling of cold wind across her face. 

“Elain?”  
  
And something about her tone, about the sheer disbelief- for the first time in her entire life, Nesta considered grabbing and physically shaking her younger sister. It was as though they were speaking different languages.  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” She snapped, “Elain. You and Morrigan sit and drink, say that I’m made of anger- and you’re right, _I’m no faery like you_ \- but you say Elain is broken.”  
  
“Elain doesn’t know what year she’s living in”-  
  
“That,” Nesta’s voice was too sharp, too loud, but she couldn’t temper it, not now, “Is not true. Hasn’t been for years- which you’d know if you spoke to either of us.”  
  
“That isn’t fair,” Feyre, teary and hectic, was shaking before her, “You both left. You left and you”-  
  
“We couldn’t _stay._ ”  
 _  
You banished me_ , she wouldn’t say. Would not unbend, wouldn’t lower herself to speak words Feyre wouldn’t bother to comprehend- that Nesta would have died in the Night Court, a thousand slow cuts, enough immortal blood to drain even eternity.

Hated. Disrespected. Unwanted.  
  
“ _I tried_ ,” Feyre cried. “The jobs, the money, the house, I”-  
  
“ _The money_ ,” Nesta repeated. “You still don’t know the laws of your own _territory._ My home was destroyed in war, Elain’s dowry burnt to the ground- I could have sued your High Lord for every cent. You might be High Lady, but _I_ am the oldest living Acheron. Head of House. The law promises restitution, don’t you know?”  
  
“Is that really why you hate Rhys,” She spit, through bitten lips, “Over money?”  
  
The Library was whispering _we’ll protect you, Librarian._ The adrenaline surging in Nesta’s body too close to battle, on the edge of an abyss- it was almost impossible to swallow it.  
  
Feyre, even in anger, always really believed what she was saying. 

It was always the worst part. 

“Rhysand hated Elain and I from the day we met.” Nesta allowed her nails to bite into her palms, breathed in the iron- she wouldn’t shake, not now, not ever, before the High Lady of the Court of Night.  
  
“Hated us every day since.” Words, in Nesta’s mouth, held power. Stories, told true in these walls, could not be forgotten. “He liked Elain best drowning, and me afraid. You gave me to Illyria to die quietly out of sight, gave Elain that house so you didn’t have to be troubled by what you thought was insanity.”  
  
“You are so young,” It was a laugh, a marvel, “You saved the world- but you didn’t even try. Just because Elain wasn’t speaking in your way doesn’t mean her words were false, _you just had to learn.”_

“So I’m wrong,” Feyre cried, body in a posture Nesta recognized from watching Azriel and Cassian spar, battle ready and _infuriating, “_ So I failed Elain and I failed you, and this is my punishment? Punish me all you want, Nesta. But please, for whatever you love have for me, consider helping Rhys. He can’t live like this.”  
  
Even now, she didn’t fathom it.  
  
Didn’t begin to comprehend.  
 _  
Nesta-_

“Feyre. I cannot. Not for you and not for me- what was done can’t be undone. It is not a _punishment_ , power has a cost and the High Lord of Night chose his toll. It was the work of a God.”  
  
And Feyre, stars and skies help her, slanted those blue, blue, tear-reddened eyes and said, “Good thing you’re one too.”  
  
Nesta froze.  
  
Nesta stopped breathing- _a year, a thousand days, the Bone Carver before she knew him calling her sister, poison that had burned her skin, every physical limit she’d slammed into and overtaken, every single hidden quality that marked her as more than fae, more than High Fae, other, monster_ \- and the noise of the Library that went unnoticed until it vanished, ceased.  
  
No pages moved, no air stirred.  
  
Cassian, in her head, in her heart, was breathing for both of them, like the rhythm could fool Nesta’s free falling body.  
  
“You knew.”  
  
Nesta remembered every single time Feyre had implied that she was going to kill herself. That she couldn’t be trusted. That she was wasting her time- each too slow, too fast, endless day Nesta had spent, drowning in the aftermath of the Cauldron.  
  
Feyre, _who knew Nesta couldn’t-  
_  
Feyre huffed all the air out of her lungs at once, crossed her arms. “Of course I knew, your eyes, your power- you took death from the Cauldron.”  
  
Nesta hadn’t taken death- she’d drunk down everything Elain hadn’t, took on Death and Creation while her sister held Time in gentle hands. She’d _become_ the Cauldron, transmuted in the drowning, burning alchemy of making, just like it had once allowed itself to be forged. A queen, a god, an open door. An act of will the likes of which had been seen in the world barely a sixfold since eternity began.  
  
An act of _agony._

“You knew the entire time,” Nesta said. No answer was needed, the guilt was all over Feyre’s angry, sickeningly contrite face. “You never told me.”  
  
“You didn’t want my _help,_ ” In Nesta’s blankness, Feyre seemed all the more desperate, seething, reckless in motion. “You didn’t even want to talk to me- all you wanted was to get _drunk, to stew in your own”-_

“Get out.” Nestas numb lips knew the words even with her mind elsewhere. “If you set foot in the Libraries again, it will be taken as an act of war. Against the Court’s of Day and Dawn, against the Ten Thousand, bound in treaty blood to the continent of Prythian. _Get out._ ”  
  
The world was moving- and it wasn’t the Library.  
  
It was light, phantom, dazzling her eyes. Contrast that blinded against the tide sweeping black at the edges of her vision. Panic- Nesta could have told someone the precise things happening to her body, the processes being impeded, driven to their aberrant peak by her brain’s insistent pain.  
  
Knowledge didn’t stop it from happening.  
  
There was no air in her lungs, _nothing_ \- there were hands in hers. Callouses that echoed from right to left, more pronounced on the palm Cassian never used to hold a shield.  
  
Nesta sank.  
  
Dizzy darkness was closer than she’d thought.  
  
Nesta came back to herself in slow pieces, blinking at gold spun pink of the setting Day sun. Surrounded, enveloped in warmth; Cassian’s whole body twisted around where she’d sunk to the ground, shield and harbor from both cold stone and her own physical disregard.  
  
“When,” Her voice rasped, throat burning, “When did you get here?”  
  
The long, slow strokes down her spine didn’t pause. “A while ago,” Cassian murmured. Solid, mesmerizing motion. More weight to the touch than Cassian normally would have given, not rough but _steady_ , grounding beyond his usual gentleness as Nesta had asked for before, in moments like this.  
  
Nesta sat up, and Cassian moved with her- readjusting until once more her whole body lived in the curve of his.  
  
“Did I break anything?”  
  
Low in his throat, Cassian made a noise before he could stop himself, a half-restrained grumble. “ _No_ ,” He shook his head, leaned lower to press his cheek to her hair. “No, but all the Library doors shut after I got here. Nothing’s broken, no one’s hurt.”  
  
Bit by bit, Nesta began breathing.

The scent of Cassian’s skin that was also the scent of her- flame and forest, cold air and star steel. “You flew all the way here.”  
  
Cassian shook his head again, smile easily detectable where it pressed against her brow. “You winnowed me, I think. It felt like winnowing.”  
  
Nesta sighed, and closed her eyes. Let the warmth sink into her bones; the furnace of Cassian around her, beneath her, the light of the sun, of Day- _safety_. Her library. Her home.  
The sun sank lower, time interminable. She’d eventually opened her eyes again, turned her head just enough that Nesta could see blazing light as it soaked through the silver-laced membrane of Cassian’s wings around them.  
  
He didn’t say _are you ready? What happened?-_ merely waited in the lush quiet until Nesta moved toward rising and stood with her. Smoothed a hand through her hair without pulling at pins or disturbing the braid, one broad palm spanning the dip of her spine in pure, unadulterated support.  
  
Nesta was possessed by the urge to kiss his mouth and marred knuckles, the gold silver sickle of a scar that curved through Cassian’s left brow. 

_She nearly did-_ twining up against his front as a vine climbs to the sun, but those full lips were moving. Asking. “-water?”

A glass, sloshing with speed, appeared in his hand. It was only Cassian’s dangerously keen instincts that stopped it from falling, spilling over his wrist.  
  
Dark eyes, disbelieving and amused. Nesta took the glass of water.  
  
Cassian watched her swallow, steady, pulled back from her body just enough for ease of motion. “Does it.. _create_ things?”  
  
Emptied- _Nesta was thirsty and exhausted, wrung out and too awake-_ the glass hovered for a scant second in midair before it simply, a breath exhaled, vanished.  
  
“Sometimes,” Nesta murmured, head tilted back to look up at him, “It’s a whole _world._ Listens. Cares.” She smiled, and it hurt, but Nesta didn’t try to hide it, “It likes you.”  
  
Nearly no sound at all to his laugh, breathed between their bodies. “We have fundamental things in common.”  
  
“ _Mhmm,_ ” A further shift, her whole face to his, “No one else has ever seen all the Library has to offer.”  
  
Cassian kissed her forehead. Her brows. Lavished love over the sharp prominence of one cheek and then the other, unfalteringly slow. “I exist as a similar covenant.”  
  
Shaky, the crack of her snicker barely made him pause. _“Covenant?_ ”  
  
Cassian let loose the smile he’d been holding back, grin wide enough his whole face transformed with it. “Promise? What should we call a sacred vow, Archeron?”  
 _  
“Sacred vow?  
_  
His mouth traveled down to to her jaw, featherlight. “Promises don’t have to be spoken aloud. Some just…exist.”  
  
Nesta tilted her head back, leaned into his body until Cassian took to cue to hold on tighter.  
  
Support was a strange and easy thing- she was only now beginning to really expect it, what she’d wanted all along. Not just the simple fact either of them would fight a world to stand side by side, but this: raw affection, natural honey sweet.  
  
The way Cassian couldn’t seem to help the thought as he took her full weight that this was what his hands were made for- _to defend, to protect, love, to cup the curve of her spine._  
  
“You’re in my skin,” Cassian whispered, to the steady, rising thunder of her pulse. “My heart. My soul. Forever. What else could possibly be sacred?”  
  
Illyrian promises, existent in life and death.  
  
Eternity opened its horrific vastness before her, a fathomless beckoning ocean. Nesta was _loved._ By this man who too, would live forever. By her family: Elain, Helion, Azriel and Lucien. Erebus. Those nightmare, perfect children who she’d taught poetry in hand with knife fights. The Library. The Court of Day. The wide open, yearning sky.  
 _  
Cassian loved her.  
_  
Could hear her, and stopped playing to simply, devastatingly, wrap her in his arms.  
  
Safe.  
  
He didn’t say, _of course I do._ Didn’t wait for her to say it back. Didn’t half playfully, half wounded venture, _don’t you know?  
_  
Held with arms and wings, the full breathe of strength that made Cassian’s beautiful body, resolute warmth around her. He pressed his face to into her hair and said nothing as Nesta melted against him, allowing herself for once, this moment to know she was worthy of such a thing at all.  


***

The Ten Thousand Libraries did not belong to the High Lord of Day.  
  
But nonetheless, walls rippled in temper, to the angry hammer of his heart, as Helion strode in. Marble, sunlight, _emptiness-_ collections subtly warped, wrapped around their Librarian in an endless spiral like laid layers of protective wards, a trap that could not be escaped.  
  
The Library was not Helion’s, but it loved him nearly as much as he loved its caretaker.  
  
Took him to Nesta between one step and the next, fury a shaking siren song that rattled down to his unsteady hands.  
  
She was safe, she was fine- she wasn’t alone.  
  
And Helion could only be grateful as the massive Illyrian between him and his best friend looked up from her hair. Cassian had come, the Library had _moved._ Nesta, who could absolutely take care of herself but shouldn’t have to, was safe.  
  
But not- as Helion knew, as Nesta caught sight of him with eyes a little too blank, the precise color of a sky that had just burst into rain- _alright_.  
  
She spun from Cassian’s arms like it was a dance, crashed right into Helion. _Safe,_ he told himself. Moderated his grip, the tension leaking from his body- Nesta didn’t need the expression of male temper, she could smell it, and that was already more than enough to be unhelpful in this moment.  
  
Two fisted hands clutched his tunic, and Helion lightly, bracingly wrapped his arms around her. “Say the word, I’ll start a fucking war. Right now. Tomorrow. We can announce it with fireworks on the border.”  
  
Nesta gave a wretched snarl of a laugh, face hidden by his arms. “She used the bit of your power that made her?”  
  
At one point, Helion had admired that tenacity.

Feyre Archeron was capable of doing completely outrageous things, taking mad risks for what she saw as the greater good. It had killed Amarantha, turned the tide of battle- but it had also meant stealing from a High Lord who would have given her whatever she wanted, caused two separate civil wars, and let loose several beings Helion knew wouldn’t harm the people of Prythian but that Feyre herself believed to be murderous monsters.  
  
Meant, apparently, ignoring his own sovereignty.

The Library had been trespassed in exactly once before- an invasion that led to the deaths of hundreds of librarians, and eventually, in the end, the last living members of Helion’s family.  
  
His kingdom was _safe_. He’d fought a war to make it so.  
  
One women who’d forgotten what is was to hear the word _no_ , to be anything but some kind of idealized, ornamental weapon of war in peacetime, was not about to change that.  
  
“She won’t be able to do it again.” Helion promised. “I taught the wards the _difference._ And if Feyre tries too hard the power will rebound right back- she’ll be lucky to escape without bursting into flames.”  
  
“Rhysand would just fix her to his liking,” Nesta hissed.  
  
Cassian, who’d frozen in place at Helion’s threat, chuckled. Offered, lightly, but not at all without intent, “I know how to break through the defenses. Rhys doesn’t have an army anymore.”  
  
“Yes, but then we have to see _Rhysand,”_ She said, to Helion’s chest. The grip of Nesta’s right hand was absolutely bruising his ribs, her scoff a beautiful, absolutely real threat.  
  
Helion snickered. Rhysand, who’d been quietly meeting Day’s refusal to trade with the North in _bribery_ , the promise of reopened mines for those precious Night Court diamonds. Rhysand, no longer the owner of the land where those mountains stood, much less where mines were safe.  
  
Rhys, who’d been the one to teach Feyre the rules didn’t apply to her.  
  
“Not at all what we deserve,” Helion agreed. “Are we feeling fire, Librarian?”  
  
Over her head, Helion caught the flicker of an appreciative smile before Cassian hid it in his hand, moving forward on the balls of his feet to stand closer to Nesta.  
  
She drew herself up, away. Shoulders back, face a devastation, and tilted her head. Said savagely sweet, “You want help with the bonfires?”  
  
Helion wanted _ruin_ something, to break something like it would settle the fear. It was a desire reflected right back in Nesta’s over-bright, rainwater vivid eyes. Half his mouth lifted to smile at that steady gaze, the twist of her lips that said _yes._  
  
“ _Fire,”_ Helion purred.  
  
“I suppose,” Nesta said. But she took his proffered arm. Reached behind herself without looking to snag Cassian’s wrist before the Library carried them away, her mate’s startled laugh echoing behind them.  
  
The oncoming solstice meant parties all across Day, in every flavor and shape his long-lived people could imagine. This meadow not yet full; the setting sun spilling slow honey as faeries of every sort emerged from the shelter of trees, in bursts of magic as they traveled from cities and homes.  
  
Cassian, smart enough to sense the tight spooled tension, caught Helion’s gaze over Nesta’s head and nodded. The smallest dip, before he swooped down to press a gentle kiss to Nesta’s brow and break away in Azriel’s direction, a cloud of darkness in forest shadows.  
  
A shade of pleasure flittering over her face, Nesta pulled Helion away from the growing crowd, toward the field to be burnt.  
  
The longest day of the year was coming on fast, just a week away. How many sunrises had he watched flat in this grass, surrounded by humming, loving, _power,_ but utterly alone?  
  
Every year after Amarantha, and many before.  
  
One turn of the wheel past, last summer- Nesta smeared with the metallic dust and smoke from her alchemy lab on a sleepless night, nonetheless outside Helion’s bedroom door in predawn. Peach juice in sparkling wine, aching sweet. Bone white on Day gold, the matching clothes Nesta had viciously insulted and worn constantly since.  
  
The longest Day, the shortest night, every moment warm.  
  
Hungry in darkness, Nesta’s power made light, the first bonfire before them catching. Her shoulders relaxed the slightest bit as she addressed words to the flames.  
  
Spoken lowly, flowers and kindling burning, “She was always going to come."  
  
Helion fed the meadow, slow and steady, the plants made safe from the fire with sheer strength. Rattled adrenaline beginning to settle at Nesta’s presence, affection that beat from the very land beneath their feet, soothing those it guarded and would guard it in return.  
  
The year turned, rich loam fed on fire, seeds bursting deep bellow.

He scoffed. “Of course she was. Will probably find some reason to trespass on Tarquin before the centuries out.”  
  
“Cresseida can take her.”  
  
“‘Course she can, she’s been _trained._ ” Helion briefly turned over the glorious image of what exactly, anyone in Summer who’d mentioned the Night court after the war knew- the Princess of Adriata was owed a debt, one she planned to collect with her bare hands.  
  
The huff of Nesta’s laugh was quiet, smile stilled on her face as she tilted back her head. Eyes on the sparks rising from the roaring fire she’d conjured, voice nearly silent but not at all soft, Nesta breathed, “ _He told her I hate her- and Feyre believed it.”  
_  
Helion swallowed the sympathetic clench of pain, fires flaring.

It lingered in his chest. Rhysand, whose paranoia grew more famous with each passing year- Rhysand, who knew exactly what would send home the deepest cracks, the most painful fracturing between these sisters who’d never again easily share life, no matter how long they lived.

“I walked into a _war_ for her.”  
  
“She’s a fool,” Helion said, voice barren with honesty.  
  
And Nesta _smiled,_ so close to the flames hot air carried wisps of hair across its vicious curve. _  
_  
“He’s lying to her. About the rebellion, himself. _The Library_.” She shook her head, turned to meet his gaze. “Nothing has changed for her.”  
  
But everything had changed here.  
  
Nesta, her fragile edges honed to razor sharpness. Beautiful, clever, ruthless as the day they’d met- but comfortable too. Settled in ferocious strength allowed the thrive, the Librarian to a living Library. 

His Second- the only one Helion had ever had. Wise council, harsh critic, best, beloved, truest friend.  
  
A _family_ , settled here and there, bonds that stretched across a continent.  
  
The center, the force that brought them all together and made a home: Nesta’s fearsome loyalty once earned, her unfathomable love once given.  
  
Across the swaying grass, strains of music floating on warm air, happy embers from Lucien’s power painted bright the love of Nesta’s life. The King of Illyria, free. Grinning beside the most deadly of Shadowsingers to live, the pink bundle of Nesta’s god-daughter and Helion’s first grandchild tucked in his arms.  
  
Speaking shadows, wings, Sorcha’s molten gold owl eyes. His love, his whole heart, who laughed light in the back of Helion’s mind with shared awe, the smell of Autumn nights mixing with present smoke.  
  
Narrowing of her eyes the only warning, a split-second cry of explosives singing through the air, Nesta flung flames to paint across the sky.  
  
Let them implode, a contained supernova of gilded vermillion, golden rose. Helion was grinning by the time Nesta threw back her head and laughed, heady. Easy as breathing to join her, the glow of high noon’s sun, heat coming in a tide.

Not pain, not an outlet of well-wounded spite and worry. They were alive, eternal, together.  
  
It didn’t matter that they’d let go eventually, release this light and furious beauty that had halted oncoming darkness.  
  
The night always ended, the sun always rose. 


End file.
